tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7335844989752385022024-02-07T11:15:04.673-06:00Spondologos!!Uncovering the truth,<br>one booze review at a time.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-30805697024494822352010-04-24T02:48:00.000-05:002010-04-24T02:52:51.027-05:00Review: Dogfish Head Palo Santo MarronWell, obviously I haven't had much time to update lately. Grad school tends to get busy at the end of the year, especially when you're about two essays behind where you should be. But I'm still indulging in the joys of fine drink, and I'm still capable of being surprised on occasion. Like by this stuff, for example.<br /><br />With Palo Santo Marron the crazy mofos at Dogfish Head have crafted something truly grand, and also utterly ridiculous. What do I mean? Well, put aside for a second the fact that this beer clocks in at 12% alcohol. That's just silly (as much as I love strong beers, 12% is still comically high), but it's not the goofiest part. Also put in parentheses the fact that it's brewed in three massive 10,000 gallon tanks made from Paraguayan lignum vitae wood, which is hard enough to be used in cutting gems and dense enough to sink in water. This fact is even more silly, but it's still not the howler. No, much more absurd than all of this is the fact that Palo Santo Marron is a <i>brown ale</i> of all things. You know, the style that got you to start drinking halfway-decent beer the first time someone bought you a Newcastle. The style so hoary and venerable you get the sense that the European aristocracy quaffs it during fox hunts. <i>That's</i> what this beer says it is. Brown ales are almost definitionally mellow, conservative, and sensible - three things which Dogfish Head does not do well. Maybe that's why they seem to have taken particular delight in drawing moustaches on the style, first with their fantastic Indian Brown Ale and now with this.<br /><br />Funny enough, though, none of this is what surprises me about the beer. That comes a lot later.<br /><br />Now, I've no idea how old the <a href=http://www.corebrewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/palo-santo-marron1.jpg>bottle</a> I have is - I bought it as a single towards the end of last year, waiting for a good time to try 'er out. I happen to have the four-pack box, too, which has a bit more history and some wonderfully rude puns ("It's all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do too.") but is otherwise fairly unremarkable. Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but try her out.<br /><br />A brown ale? Really? Well, given that this stuff pours a black whose darkness is right up there with the rudest stouts I've put down, I have to question that categorization. No light passing through at all - this beast is a void, a singularity. Even the tiny little half-finger of beige head doesn't offer much relief, especially given its short lifespan (no way it's going to hold up against 12%). Only the nose reveals good reason to call this a brownie: mellow earthy English hops are right in front, fuggles or something related. But surprisingly, where I was expecting to get a mass of hops and wood, I get very little. The malts especially are tough to get a bead on: there's a little bit of a roasted tone and a dollop of acidity to it, although that may be the wood. I hope it's the wood, anyways, otherwise I'm not really smelling that at all. What I <i>am</i> getting a lot of, on the other hand, is alcohol. It ain't hard to estimate the caliber of this brew. I can tell it's going to slap me around a little.<br /><br />Now, the taste is... <i>confusing</i> more than anything else. Although it's extremely rich and very striking, especially on the back end, it's rather hard to describe. Biting coffee bitterness comes right up front, which then develops into an extremely unique woody, almost burned taste. It's very, very thick and malty, although it's hard to say what sort of malts we're dealing with (or where the malt ends and the wood begins); by this point everything is so dense that it's nigh-impossible hard to isolate things into single flavors. At the back end, things begin to separate out a bit: I get more charred wood, some cinnamon, walnuts, and maybe raisins or strawberries (some kind of sour fruit, anyways). The hops that I detected in the nose add a bit of a grassy, earthy quality, but the malt flavor are the headliners here. The bitterness, which pretty much rules all the rest, surrounds itself with sour fruit and just a little bit of milk chocolate sweetness; they fuse into a very impressive (if not very complex) whole that carries through to a very long aftertaste.<br /><br />Do I like the taste? Well, yes. It's completely unique, and like many DH beers I'd recommend it for novelty value alone. The problem is that as nice as it is, it just isn't as good as (say) a barrel-aged stout. For example, I prefer the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-walter-paytons.html>Walter Payton stout</a> - by no means a perfect beer - simply because there's a lot more going on (plus it's way less expensive). The Palo Santo Marron is a good beer - one of Dogfish Head's best - but it's just too damn simple, and in terms of taste you can do better for less.<br /><br />So aside from novelty, then, why would one buy it? Well! You have to look fairly deep to see the point of this beer, but it's definitely there. You see, for such a massive and stupidly powerful beer this stuff is magnificently easy to drink. The mouthfeel isn't exactly light, but it's nothing you haven't tasted in porters with half the ABV. And speaking of the alcohol - incredibly - it just doesn't come out in the taste at anywhere near its true strength. If it weren't for the nose, which is hotter than a belt-fed Uzi, I'd put this in the 7-8% range tops. The result of all this is that I end up drinking the thing way too quickly, and five minutes later I'm thoroughly and unexpectedly sloshed.<br /><br /><i>That's</i> the point of this beer. And that's what's surprised (and plastered) me. I'd gone in expecting a sipper of the Walter Payton variety, and it does indeed taste lovely, but that's the wrong sort of thing to compare this to. Purely and simply, this is an alcohol delivery system. <i>It exists to get you drunk</i>, and it's very good at its job. Sure it's expensive, and that puts it in a very narrow niche - most people who want to get roaringly drunk on beer will just grab themselves an <a href=http://www.40ozmaltliquor.com/images/cases/axeheadcase.jpg>Axe Head</a>. But for the bourgeoisie among us who can afford it, this is the best imaginable way to leave the planet in two bottles or less. Other beers do better on taste and on value, but I can think of nothing in a beer bottle that'll get you into trouble more easily than this.<br /><br />Think of Palo Santo Marron, then, as a malt liquor for the nuveau-riche. Think of it as a q-ship with hops, a hidden cruise missile aimed at your medulla. I don't think there's <i>much</i> space for such a beast in the world - but what little space there is, this beer fills well.<br /><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: A somewhat simpleminded, very malty way of getting drunk real damn quick.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-27546085951049739832010-04-11T04:13:00.003-05:002010-04-24T02:53:49.918-05:00Review: Goose Island Night Stalker Imperial StoutIt's always hard being the younger sibling. Especially when your older kin is rightly famous. Basically, assuming you aren't cynical enough to simply hop onto the name and ride it towards your own limited and mediocre success, you're in for a life of being introduced as a brother or sister. (One thinks of the complaint of Abraham Mendelssohn: "Once I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son.") Unless, of course, you're actually able to meet or even outdo your sibling. Which has been known to happen on occasion (looking at you, Serena Williams).<br /><br /><a href=http://www.gooseisland.com/goosefilebin/images/products/full/NightStalker.jpg>Night Stalker</a> here is in a similar sort of situation. It's made from the same basic stuff as Goose Island's <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-goose-island-bourbon.html>Bourbon County Stout</a>, which is probably still the best beer I've ever had, but instead of throwing it in a whiskey barrel for a couple of months to mellow they saturate the stuff with Mt. Hood and Simcoe hops and let it loose on an unsuspecting public. For awhile they were only serving it on draft, but now it's finally getting a proper bottled release.<br /><br />Me, I've got two of them. One of them I'm storing away until the hops die down a bit. The other I'm drinking now, say about a year before I probably should. Numbers? Well, it's 11.7% alcohol by volume, which is slightly below than the mind-numbing 13% of the BCS. It's also ten bucks for a deuce-deuce bottle, only two less than its older kin. And at close to the same price, it's gotta be nearly as good or better. Is it? Let's find out.<br /><br />Holy crap, the hops. I've barely cracked the cap and already the piney fumes of California are filling the room. This is fierce, eye-watering, wallpaper-peeling stuff. Put this near a houseplant and it'll be dead within minutes. It smells for all the world like an IPA, and a particularly potent and biting one at that - everything is grapefruity citrus wrapped around pine needles, soaked in alcohol. Even with all those hops, there's no way they're going to hide a level of heat well north of 20 proof. After I eventually get around to pouring it, it finally begins to seem like a stout. Night Stalker is a rich, syrupy motor-oil black with a one-finger sepia head; the stuff is utterly gorgeous, honestly. Giving the nose a second chance, I still can't smell anything beyond hops and booze. The malt, so powerful in the BCS, is nowhere to be found. After a round of agitation I can only just begin to detect it - there's some roasted stuff in there trying to push a bit of espresso through, but that's all, and even that's gone after a moment. Beyond that this aroma is all fresh, sour, grassy, nose-runny, brutal hops.<br /><br />On the taste it wins back a lot of points. The closest comparison, as you might expect, is its older brother. Like the BCS, Night Stalker is all about throwing as many flavors around as possible. It's got a similar rich, almost too crowded taste profile - with the difference that there's no oaky bourbon notes at all, way less sheer thickness, a lot of dialing back on everything else, and a hell of a lot more hops. Up front and going into the middle, coffee and mocha dominate with a billion additional flavors swarming around them. It's not even desperately bitter or hot at this point, either: for an imperial stout of such power and mass, this bit of the profile is shockingly drinkable. Even here, though, the grassy grapefruit of the hops is working its magic, and it really gets into its groove by the end. The closing moments are a big juicy California slap in the face, one which slowly fades out into a more mellow piney aura. Here I was expecting the malts to completely give up the ghost - but to their credit, they don't! Instead they too climax into a big boozy bittersweet (emphasis on the sweet) finish, with flavors of rum and wood emerging. The aftertaste, consisting of the afterglow from these malts intermixed with the piney hop remains, lasts pretty much until one's next sip.<br /><br />Is it easy to drink? Uh, no. It's not quite as good at smearing one's mouth as the Bourbon County Stout, which is an acknowledged master, but it's not too far away from that. And it's still thick, hot, and very very hoppy, so this is a beer that's going to take awhile. But that's okay, because drinking this brew slowly - as one must - is a rewarding thing. Unlike the BCS, which is amazing right from the start, this one takes awhile to work its charms. At first it comes over way, way too hot and hoppy, as if you've just been thrown into a citrusy sea of alcohol. It takes awhile to learn to breathe. As it warms and as you start to adjust, the beer begins to reveal is subtleties - and there are a lot of them. Vanilla, sassafras, prunes, a little touch of licorice, things I can't even name - tons and tons of flavors all stacked on top of each other. So, this beer is a chainsaw-weilding maniac at heart. But it's a maniac with a library and a fantastic art collection. <br /><br />It's good, this beer, within shooting distance of great. But there are three problems with it. First, it really is just too young right now (as I expected). It needs a good couple of months (make that years) of mellowing before it'll truly come into its own. Second, there's the price. $10 is too much. It's a very good imperial stout, true, but you can get other very good imperial stouts for half that price. But those two, glaring though they may be, aren't Night Stalker's biggest problem (and you should already have some idea of what is). For it may be an amazing, even a world class beer, but there's one thing it'll never be: better than its big brother.<br /><br />Sure, Night Stalker is pretty damn complex, but the Bourbon County Stout tops it. Night Stalker may be loud and shouty and overpowering, but the BCS has even more presence without resorting to hop terrorism. All this beer does, essentially, is to take the skeleton of its older sibling and run with it in a different (worse) direction. Only hopeless hopheads and completionists need ever really consider trying one. If you want a ridiculously hoppy beer, buy a Hopslam. If you want a stupid-good imperial stout brewed by Goose Island, buy a BCS. If you need something that splits the difference... well, buy a four-pack of Old Rasputins.<br /><br />I snagged two of these things, which I don't regret. I have no doubt that beer enthusiasts worldwide have also grabbed a few to enjoy, pack away, and share with friends. Rightly so: it's good beer. The thing is, though, Goose Island made 750 <i>cases</i> of this stuff. That's <i>nine thousand</i> bottles. And 9k may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that most of them are going to be kept around the Chicago area. Are there, say, five thousand people here willing to drop ten bucks on a bottle of hoppy 11.7% stout? Call me cynical, but I have my doubts. It would be fine if it were something totally unique, but it's not - no one except the hardcore will bother, and after the curious have tried it once they'll simply fork over the two extra bucks and switch back to the BCS. So expect to see these dark, ominous bottles clogging up Binnys store shelves well into next year.<br /><br />Sad to say, then, it's just another case of a sibling getting overshadowed. If you see it heavily discounted - and it will be - give Night Stalker a shot, but otherwise you don't really need to bother. Sucks to be the baby of the family, eh?<br /><br /><b>Grade</b>: A-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Bittersweet, complex, delicious, extremely hoppy, and - sad to say - basically pointless.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-19557845669951514102010-04-03T17:22:00.006-05:002010-04-03T17:59:23.417-05:00Rye-a-Rama: Rye Hopper, Cane and Ebel, Bitter Woman in the Rye, Hop Rod Rye, and Red's Rye PALast year, you may recall, <a href="http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/12/bell-thon-bells-rye-stout-special.html">I tried Bell's Rye stout</a> - the first and only rye beer I'd ever had. I wasn't amazed by that brew (I gave it a B), but it was intriguingly smooth and bready. Enough to make me curious as to what everyone else was doing with this stuff, barley's meaner cousin. Surely there had to be some interesting beers out there using it. And, as a result, I've spent the last couple of months gathering a few together for a comparison.<br /><br />Without further ado, the beers are:<br /><br />-the Rye Hopper from the <a href="http://www.frenchbroadbrewery.com/">French Broad Brewing Co.</a> in Asheville,<br />-the Cane and Ebel from <a href="http://www.twobrosbrew.com/">Two Brothers</a> in Warrenville (about an hour west of Chicago),<br />-the Bitter Woman in the Rye from <a href="http://www.tyranena.com/">Tyranena</a> in a mysterious location between Madison and Milwaukee,<br />-the Hop Rod Rye from <a href="http://www.bearrepublic.com/">Bear Republic</a> in Cloverdale CA, and finally<br />-Red's Rye PA (that's not a typo) from <a href="http://www.foundersbrewing.com/">Founders</a> in Grand Rapids.<br /><br />Most of these are basically IPAs with rye in them, although a few (particularly the Two Brothers entry) look like genuine oddballs. They range from obscure 5.9% lightweights (the Rye Hopper) to nationally distributed 8% monsters (the Bear Republic entry). I'm genuinely curious as to what these taste like, and which is best.<br /><br />So, let's start with the underdog first: the Rye Hopper. French Broad is a tiny little brewery (I've been there!) nestled in on the south side of Asheville. I tried a couple of their beers while I was down there (their Wee Heavier, by the way, is quite good) and grabbed a bomber of this particular treat to go. The bottle design is, let's say, <a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2478/3685927451_b9f941d42c.jpg?v=" 0="">uninspired</a>. This, to my mind, is no bad thing - it may just mean they've put the money they would've otherwise spent on a guy with a macbook into their beer. And, well, since this is my first rye beer after the Bell's I don't really know what to expect from it. But I've come to trust that these folks know what they're doing.<br /><br />Well, it pours a lovely and rich amber color, with about a finger and a half's worth of off-white head. The aroma is initially more hoppy than anything else - good all-American citrus, IPA stuff. Actually, you'd be totally justified in taking this stuff as an IPA prima facie. But don't be fooled, because a little deeper in there's definitely something different: the malts are really bready, almost earthy, like a field on a dry day. That, presumably, would be the rye, then. There's a little bit of the usual caramel note from the malts in there too, but the stars here are definitely the good ol' California hops and that funky rye malt.<br /><br />The taste, too, initially fooled me into thinking "India Pale." Initially there's that penetrating Christmas tree bitterness characteristic of American IPAs, but then it takes a hard left turn. Where I expect it to develop into caramel and more citrus, it suddenly becomes spicy and bready - mouth-coveringly so, although not in the cloying way that the Bell's sometimes flirted with. It's a pure, uncomplicated moment of rye, and I like it. The ending is more traditional - your usual IPA slap of sharp citrusy hops - but after the hops die away the aftertaste, again, is really dominated by the spicy bread notes. The stuff clings on like crazy, which really only makes me want to drink more.<br /><br />This is a fine brew. The more I drink it the more I notice a lonely bit of caramel sweetness way way in the back trying to moderate things, but it doesn't really have a chance: this stuff is very dry and shamelessly bitter. It's like drinking a caraway and cascade smoothie (maybe a little less thick). The mouthfeel may be right smack dab in the middle, but it's still surprisingly full-bodied for a mere 5.9 percenter. I like this stuff a lot, and I'm liking it more and more as I near the bottom of the bottle. It's a sipper, to be sure - there's just way too much flavor here to drink it with any speed - but it's never overwhelming, and it never gets old. I'd even be tempted to call this a perfect dinner beer, if I could think of something to pair it with (lamb, maybe?).<br /><br />But that's enough of the Rye Hopper for now, because we've got more beers to do. For our second rye offering, we move from the mountains of Asheville to the flatlands of Illinois. And if French Broad was going for an IPA with rye (a RyePA, as Founders would have it), a hoppy sipper of an ale with spicy bready notes, then the the Two Brothers folks seem to be up to something entirely different. Just <a href="http://www.twobrosbrew.com/Cane%20&%20Ebel.htm">look</a> at how they describe this stuff on their website. Simcoe and summit hops? "Thai palm sugar"? Who do these guys think they are, Dogfish Head? Originality definitely seems to be number one here, so here too I don't know entirely what to expect.<br /><br />The Cane and Ebel pours a very dark ruby-amber shade, much darker than the French Broad entry. This time there's only a one-finger head or so, and it quickly retreats - this is a seven-percenter to the previous 5.9, remember. And the aroma. Wow, that's different. It starts off hoppy - a oddly fruity kind of bite mixed with some of the usual citrus notes. There's some toffee in there too, from the malts. It's all very civil and normal, right up until the point where you give it a few swirls - and suddenly the nose goes insane. Mango? Vanilla? Cherries? Peaches? Cloves? It's an astonishing cloud of flavors, one of the most complex and elusive noses I've ever come across. The only thing missing, really, is the rye notes I was expecting. Maybe they've just been outdone here. In any case, it's a fabulous aroma and I'm nearly ready to recommend this stuff by smell alone. Unless it tastes like a sewer pipe, it's not getting lower than a B.<br /><br />It doesn't taste like a sewer pipe. As a matter of fact, it's really, really nice. The taste certainly isn't as varied as the smell, but how could it be? And surprisingly - considering the crazy ingredients and the extra alcohol - it's actually easier to drink than the previous entry. Smoother than a newly-buffed bowling ball, this stuff. The front end's a caress of sweet and sour malt, plus a peck of bitter hops (not up there with a serious imperial IPA, but you definitely know they're there). Towards the middle it gets even sweeter, way sweeter than the Rye Hopper, and at the same time the familiar spicy-grainy rye flavors start to creep in. This is where the beer wins me over: the combination of bready rye and sweet malt and sugar is phenomenal. Then there's the hoppy bite followed by the bready aftertaste - but again, much sweeter this time out. Some might find the sugar slightly too much here, but I totally dig it. And this is an aftertaste that'll last awhile, too, if you let it - but you won't, because you're already taking another sip.<br /><br />This is a <i>fantastic</i> beer; I've absolutely fallen in love. And I shouldn't have: normally I adore stouts and dopplebocks, heavy dark malty stuff, and not ridiculous hoppy sugary bready things. But just look at me, I'm sucking this bottle down like a fish. And when I'm done, I'll probably want another (which I don't have). In a strange way this actually reminds me of the <a href="http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2010/02/doppel-off-ayinger-celebrator.html">Celebrator</a>: there's that same sense of, "there's no way something this complex should be so drinkable." It's hard to find any flaws at all. Again, someone without my sweet tooth may find it too sugary, but that's literally the worst thing one can say. Other than that, this beer is pretty much perfect.<br /><br />It's the mark of first drinking an A-level beer that the world is a little bit different afterwards. And here that's true in the usual sense - it's set a new standard, almost a new genre- but also in another one as well. Before, if you wanted to head to the store and buy a truly <i>great</i> beer made roundabouts the Chicago area, you had to choose between the Yankees-esque and rather boring Goose Island and the brilliant but cultish Three Floyds... and that was mostly it (maybe Half-Acre too, but you have to look around a bit for them). Now, however, there's a third way. Two Brothers are a little crazy, but affordable and available; they aren't totally ubiquitous nor the cheapest option, but neither are they going to only sell their most famous beer on one day a year. They've become, as it were, the Bill Clinton of Chicago brewing. If they can keep making beers like this, everyone else should be very worried.<br /><br />But we must be moving on. I honestly didn't think the Two Brothers would be quite so good; I was expecting to wander through these first few rather unremarkably, letting the favorites clean up at the end. But now I may have hit the summit early. Whatever the case, I feel a bit of sympathy for the beer up next in line. And, oh lord, it happens to be Tyrenena's Bitter Woman in the Rye. There's an uphill battle in store for the folks from Wisconsin.<br /><br />Now, I tried Tyrenena's normal Bitter Woman IPA sometime last year and I rather liked it. It's not particularly strong (like some American IPAs) in terms of alcoholic muscle, but it more than makes up for it by firing a great big grapeshot load of bitter fruity hoppiness directly into your mouth and sinuses. What they've done here, I suppose, is make pretty much the same beer and throw some rye into the recipe. No indication at all of how strong this is, but the original was in the high five range (5.75%) and I expect about the same here.<br /><br />Well, it pours almost exactly like the Rye Hopper - beautifully amber-colored, with a quickly-receding one-finger head. I suppose I should expect that, given that both beers are more or less modified IPAs: this beer looks like one and smells like one. But it's quite a lot sweeter-smelling than I recall from the original Bitter Woman - the caramel malts are right up front, and the classic west coast hops come following behind. The hops actually come across as pretty subdued compared (once again) to the Rye Hopper. And, of course, there's the same bready notes from the rye. It's a nice aroma, and I think I actually prefer it over the French Broad offering - at the price of a little power there's a touch more depth, although nowhere near the variety of Cane and Ebel. (Compared to that masterpiece, this nose - as good as it is - loses out hard.)<br /><br />When you sip it, BWitR comes across quite a lot less sweet than you'd think it would (although it's still moreso than the Rye Hopper). Sweet honey is first up, along with a nibble of hops. There's more sugar and bitterness throughout the middle, but it's only at the end that the grainy, spicy, bready rye taste peeks in. Unlike the last two beers, though, it never really takes over. Actually, this has by far the least rye flavor of anything here. The aftertaste is more caramel malt, hops, and more of what remains from the (rather half-hearted) rye infusion.<br /><br />In essence, BWitR is what it says on the label: more than the Rye Hopper, this isn't so much a "rye beer" as an IPA with rye added. The results are pretty good, albeit outclassed in this company. What's most interesting about this experiment, though, is that they somehow ended up with something <i>less</i> exciting than what they started out with. In the end, this is a beer that can't quite decide what it wants to be: the addition of rye rounds out the aggressive hop edge, lessening its power as an IPA, but there's not enough extra character to carry it somewhere else. On the other hand, this rather muddled status makes it very appealing for a different role. To my taste, Bitter Woman with rye in it becomes something of a <i>party beer</i> - were it not so tough to find, I'd definitely think about substituting it in for a more typical (mild) IPA the next time I'm playing host. It's not something that'll give anyone a revelation, but you could very easily entertain a group for a few hours with a six-pack or three.<br /><br />But once again, it's time to move on. At last, here it is: the daddy. The Hop Rod Rye.<br /><br />This beer intimidates by what's on the bottle alone. The <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3123/2661374529_d27c855876.jpg?v=" 0="">ugly flaming 1930s hot rod coupe</a> (were they watching The California Kid for inspiration?) may initially seem goofy, but in geeky microbrewer vocabulary it screams "Don't fuck with me, I'm serious." The only way to do this better is to transpose a hop blossom onto a skull and crossbones. And then there's the text - the scary bits aren't so much the ones that say "made with 18% rye," but the ones that say "8% alcohol by volume" and "Sediment at bottom of bottle may be a result of the truckload of hops." And this is even before you notice that BeerAdvocate ranks this as the 71st best beer in the world, the only rye beer to make the top 100. So I'm fully expecting this to kick my ass.<br /><br />Let's give her a pour, then.<br /><br />Holy lord that's hoppy. The California explodes out of the bottle the moment I pop the cap, and it only gets more dense as I pour the stuff. The color is actually quite similar to the Two Brothers - a kind of very dark amber, perhaps a few shades bleaker than the previous entry. And as promised, there are indeed floaties, and lots of them. The head is cream flaked with orange, two fingers' worth, a foamy monster that sticks around despite the alcohol dragging it south. Holy mother is this going to be strong. The aroma dies down a bit after a moment, but a swirl or two brings it right back. Yup, all hops. There's not even a nod towards balancing here - no real malts in the aroma at all, not even the rye, just grapefruit and pine needles as far as the nose can smell. It doesn't have anywhere near the nuance of the Cane and Ebel, but then that's not the point. This is all about brute force, shock and awe, sheer scale. When Heidegger evoked the category of the "enormous," he was thinking about this beer.<br /><br />The first moment you sip it, however, you suspect something's gone wrong. There's a tiny citrus bite on the tongue up front, but in the middle it's actually extremely well-behaved. Hell, there's even a nice baked toffee flavor in there and way more maltiness than one would have expected from the smell. It's nice, it's soothing. You might even begin to relax. And then you swallow, and all hell breaks loose.<br /><br />There's nothing subtle about how this brew behaves at the back of your mouth; it's as if the skies simply open up and drop a sharp piney firestorm onto your pretty malt paradise. This moment right here, the split-second in which you swallow a mouthful of HRR, is the essence of California brewing. It's the <i>Summa Hopologiae</i> if you will. If you love such beer then you owe it to yourself to stop reading this right now and go pick up a bottle immediately. And strangely enough, it's the <i>rye</i> that first provides some relief to all this. It slowly, slowly cuts its way through the forest of christmas trees and grapefruits to supply its characteristic earthy-grainy taste. The rye totally dominates the aftertaste (which is, of course, very dry), sitting alongside a load of residual hops. And neither is going away for awhile - not until you take another sip (which you will).<br /><br />Alcohol? Well, I can tell it's stronger than the other three, but not by a lot (I would have guessed in the low sevens). The mouthfeel is creamy but (inexplicably) pretty light for such a monster - like the others, I suspect this is down to the rye contents. Like the Rye Hopper and BWitR, this is a California IPA at heart with rye added for a bit of character. Unlike the Tyranena entry, the two are complimentary: there's no way I could enjoy a beer this hoppy without something special to provide relief, and the rye does that brilliantly.<br /><br />This is the best of the rye IPAs so far. All three are all uncomplicated, wonderful slices of hoppy Americana. But while the Hopper is an Olds 442 - quirky and obscure, but still a brute - and the Woman in the Rye is a 'Stang - strangely civil in spite of itself - the Hop Rod Rye is a Hemi Barracuda. It's not pretty, neither is it subtle. It's got more power and probably more insanity than a third world dictator. It's one of the most distinctive beers I've ever had, But - dare I say? - in the end I believe I still prefer Two Brothers with their Ferrari Daytona.<br /><br />There's one more beer to review here, but it's one I bought significantly later than the others (like, by a couple of weeks). It's the entry from Founders, <a href="http://www.foundersbrewing.com/founders/images/stories/red-bottle.png">Red's (so-called) Rye PA</a>. Although the competition isn't exactly fresh in my mind, I couldn't post this comparo in good faith without trying this stuff, since - with the possible exception of the Bear Republic entry - it's by far the most common beer of this sort. So: how does it stack up?<br /><br />Well, like the French Broad and Tyrenena beers, it pours a nice amber orange. It's a shade or two darker than the others, although not quite into Bear Republic territory. The head, too, gives itself about a finger before sinking back into the depths. And, unsurprisingly, this is quite hoppy - close to imperial IPA territory, in fact. Nothing like the sheer force of the previous entry, but in return there's a bit more nuance: along with the typical grapefruit smells there's a nice, freshly-mowed grass sort of aroma. It's not rye, not that I can tell anyways, but it's rather nice. And, with a bit of agitation, the malts come right out: I detect lots of caramel and toffee smells, but still no rye. Hmm.<br /><br />The flavor profile is, well - it's rather like the Rye Hopper, really, only not as good. There's a bit of sharp piney bitterness up front, just like an IPA, and then the rye hits - only instead of being a kind of spicy sandwich, as the French Broad is, this one slaps you with a mouthful of wet construction paper. It's definitely rye, but it's all gone wrong somehow: it should make me want to drink more, not scrape my mouth out with a chisel. Fair enough, there are some sweeter malts in here fighting back, but it's pretty pointless: in its middle sections this beer is basically like drinking newspaper. The finish is a little bit better, if only because it goes back to an old-fashioned imperial IPA citrus bomb. But even that's not enough to save it, as the aftertaste is really not pleasant - again, the rye taste sticks around like my mouth's been coated with paper mache.<br /><br />I don't like this beer at all. <i>And</i> it's actually pretty watery compared to the others. <i>And</i> I can taste the extra alcohol (6.6%), although it's not quite as strong as the HRR. Is there anything at all that's good about this beer? Well... I suppose it gets slightly easier to drink after awhile... but that's like saying you get used to being smothered with paper towels after it happens a few times. And it's still no excuse not to go for a regular imperial IPA. I suppose it's pretty smooth too, although the paper flavors rather ruin that too. So, yes, this is not at all to my taste. But some might like it, I suspect: if you like hoppy beers with long, raspy finishes, this could be your brew. I'll leave it to you; you can have it.<br /><br />I dunno. This is the second Founders in a row which I've hated; maybe I'm just not getting it? Maybe I have an irrational dislike of the company? Maybe. But, to my judgment, this is easily the least-successful of the IPA-with-rye brews. Bear Republic rounded out a beer that would otherwise be too brutal; French Broad added an interesting middle section to a good ol' fashioned IPA; Tyranena rather unwittingly made a rather solid session beer. What, exactly, have Founders done? I can't really say they failed, because I have no idea what they were going for in the first place.<br /><br />Red's Rye seems to me, at best, like a novelty. "Rye beer! Wow!" It's around, perhaps, so that folks can try it once and impress their friends. But if you must drink such a thing - and you should - take it from me: there are better examples out there. At least five, in fact, counting these and the Bell's.<br /><br /><b>French Broad Rye Hopper</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: A delicious spicy grapefruit sandwich on rye. Okay, that doesn't sound remotely appealing, but trust me: it works.<br /><br /><b>Two Brothers Cane and Ebel</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A<br /><b>Summary</b>: It tastes like hoppy grain candy, and it smells like a bunch of fruit having an orgy in a pâtisserie.<br /><br /><b>Tyrenena Bitter Woman in the Rye</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: It'd be perfect for your average grad school departmental party. Shame it's so hard to find.<br /><br /><b>Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A<br /><b>Summary</b>: A bottle of flaming hop juice, otherwise nigh-undrinkable, is mediated and made into a tour de force by a big dollop of rye. I'd still take the C&E most days, though.<br /><br /><b>Founder's Red's Rye PA</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: C-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Dip the New York Times in a good IPA and then chew on it for awhile, and I think you'll get roughly the same effect.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-54953526352472879612010-03-22T20:00:00.003-05:002010-03-22T20:10:36.486-05:00Vacation Roundup: Thomas Creek Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale and Pump House PorterAnother week, another pair of beers I grabbed in Asheville. This time it's a couple of brews from the <a href="http://www.thomascreekbeer.com/">Thomas Creek Brewery</a> in Greenville, SC; I haven't heard of them, but then again I'd never heard of the folks at Ceylon either. So, let's see what these southern boys've got for us.<br /><br />First up from Greenville folks is the Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale, apparently a summer seasonal. I bought it, among a number of other appealing choices, because I had no idea what any of the words in that name were doing together and it sounded interesting. The <a href="http://beersucker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/tc-van-cream-ale.jpg">bottle</a>, however, is not that interesting: it features two guys fishing and a funky logo, and could basically be mistaken for an organic root beer of some kind.<br /><br />Anyhow it's a cream ale, a style with which I am not well-acquainted. With the exception of a Genesee I had a few years ago (which I don't remember liking) I don't think I've ever had a one. This could be a new experience, then. And the website confirms this in one sentence: this beer is "a light-bodied and golden American style cream ale with a highly refreshing palate and an undertone of pure vanilla essence." So they <i>actually put vanilla</i> into this stuff? Oh, man. I have enough misgivings about chocolate and coffee - vanilla has the potential to dominate a beer like an angry mistress with a snake whip. Here goes.<br /><br />It pours a pale, lemony yellow with a fizzy one-finger white head. It looks a little like a macrobrewed lager, to be honest. Only when you stick your head in do you notice what's special, and - surprise! - it's the vanilla. It doesn't totally take over the smell, but nor does it integrate with the rest of it - which is mainly pale malts and some light hops, your standard pilsner stuff. The vanilla aroma just sort of floats on top of this, like oil on water, and it comes and goes. Let the glass sit for a moment and the sweet vanilla notes come wafting out; give it some agitation and the malts snatch the aroma right back. It's odd.<br /><br />The taste is also odd. It's nice, so long as you don't drink too much or too fast. Take just a sip at a time and the unusual combination works beautifully: the vanilla arrives at the beginning and holds place like an ostinato, while the bitter but light beery flavors wax and wane over it. Drink it with patience and the sour and bitter qualities of the malts, rather than taking over the vanilla, give it a lovely flattering contrast. Try to drink too quickly, however, and things go wrong: the malts and (rather wimpy) hops take over right from the beginning, with the vanilla only coming out in the aftertaste (and not pleasantly so). Sucking it down is clearly not the right way to quaff this stuff - a fact that makes it a poor choice for everyday use, and about as far from the pilsner norm as you can get. It's a smooth beer too (it had better be, at 4.5% abv), light and carbonated - which makes it all the more strange that it sucks to drink fast.<br /><br />It's an interesting thought, this beer, but does it work? Sipped for a half-hour it's extremely interesting, but other than that it's just too subtle, too delicately balanced, too easy to ruin. And this is a <i>summer seasonal</i>, exactly the sort of beer where you don't want subtlety. Weird flavor additives go in abbey ales and stouts, not in glorified pilsners there to provide refreshment in the heat. And despite this fact, despite all the reason in me screaming that this isn't a good beer, I'm liking it more and more with every sip. The vanilla tends to linger, and over the course of the bottle it very slowly begins to win its battle against the malts. The result is that this gets better as it goes along; it gains character and complexity, rather than just getting warm and nasty. I still don't think the idea quite works, but no matter the season I'd take a single failure like this over a dozen decent but identical wheatbeers and pale lagers.<br /><br />Since this beer is basically sui generis, and is likely to remain so, I don't think I can grade it. It exists for the sake of the curious, and I think that's how it should be.<br /><br />The second and last entry from the Greenvillians appears to be more pedestrian. It's a porter, and one with a less boring but somehow even more more unremarkable <a href="http://www.thomascreekbeer.com/wpimages/wpd2b9512e.png">bottle</a> than the last one. I prefer to link images large enough that you can actually see something, but here it doesn't really matter - this label really looks like it should be the cover of a now-forgotten alt rock album released circa 1995. But we're not here to be catty about designs, we're here to drink beer. Let's crack this open.<br /><br />Well, it pours very dark indeed - not quite pitch black, but the light only barely passes through it. The head's almost nonexistent, something I don't expect from a brew this weak (a mere 5.75% abv), and what little there is quickly settles into a foam. It more than redeems itself in the aroma, though: this smells absolutely fantastic. It's not really a typical porter smell - think of an imperial stout dialed back a few notches and with the fuzz pedal turned off. There's a pure, rich cacao and cherries smell here, interlaced with nuts, caramel, and a little bit of cinnamon. I get a roasted malt aroma, too, although it's not the most prominent thing in the nose by far. I am absolutely in love. I may have to move to South Carolina in the near future if the beer itself is as good as its smell.<br /><br />...It isn't. It's not bad, though. The front end, surprisingly, is the sweetest part of the taste profile, a kind of toffee taste with a bit of smoke to it. This gets taken over rather quickly by cacao and charcoal, although the roasted malts are never too intrusive. Everything else is more of the same: the bittersweet, smoky character hangs on through the aftertaste, which lasts forever (as it should). The finish is a bit dry, but not excessively so. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Edmund Fitzgerald porter - there's that same sense of roasted malts barely kept under restraint. The Pump House isn't really in the same league as that monster, but it's still a fine beer. Its greatest flaw is that it's rather watery; if you can get past that and emphasize the smell of the stuff, it'll make a fine little session porter.<br /><br />Overall? Well, if I graded entirely on aroma this would be well into the high A range. The taste and the texture aren't quite there yet, though. Give it a shot if you see it on a shelf somewhere - although if it's between this stuff and the Cream Ale, I'd grab the latter for novelty value alone.<br /><br />Nice work all around, Thomas Creek. I look forward to trying more of your stuff whenever I'm in the neighborhood.<br /><br /><b>Thomas Creek Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: n/a<br /><b>Summary</b>: On the Island of Misfit Beers, this thing is in the aristocracy. Try it.<br /><br /><b>Thomas Creek Pump House Porter</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: Tastes like an ashy but pretty good porter. Smells like a spicy chocolate and cherry party in heaven.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-66229447749150116552010-03-19T05:20:00.015-05:002010-03-19T06:06:05.878-05:00Micreview: Guinness Extra Stout and Murphy's StoutWell, it's the night after St. Patty's. And, although I may be late about it, I suppose I'm a obligated to review some Irish stouts. But there's a problem: I think the big names are shite, to be honest, including and especially all the Guinness I've had. I'm told, of course, that I've never had the <i>real</i> Guinness - and I reserve an open mind for if I try a pint of it one day - but I can state with certainty that all the Guinness that I've had in Chicago bars or in cans has been a muted watery mess not worth the material used to brew it.<br /><br />Let's see, then, if a bottle of the Extra Stout does any better. This particular example was proudly brewed in Toronto, <s>Canada</s> Ireland, and it's got the same cream-on-black bomber design you've seen in every grocery store everywhere (especially in March). So: is it any good?<br /><br />Well, it certainly looks like a stout should, pouring jet-black with a finger and a half of tan head. The nose is rather unassuming, though: the coffee-like note of roasted barley comes first, and there's also just a little bit of fruit if you concentrate. Sour fruit, not sweet - underripened cherries, maybe. It's not bad, but it's nothing to knock you over, either by detail or by raw power.<br /><br />The taste is quite dry, as it should be, and fuller than I recalled. There's a touch of cacao at the start, which then expands into a full-on roasted malt frenzy. Halfway through it's chiefly lots and lots of charcoal and cacao, with a sweet-and sour note sneaking in towards the end. The hops aren't exactly no-shows, but they don't do much to relieve matters: mostly they just seem to add a slightly rusty effect, which isn't great. The aftertaste, to no one's surprise, is dry, consisting entirely of the bitter, lingering roasted flavors. It's a decent brew, I guess - it's a hell of a lot better than the nitro stuff they sell in bars - but it still fails to have any hook for me. The thing I'm most disappointed in, I think, is the mouthfeel: initially I found this stout rather full-bodied and creamy, but halfway through the bottle it's getting increasingly watery with every sip.<br /><br />This beer, I would say, is exactly average. If you've got some roasted goose on the carvery (or some really nice Swiss cheese) and you need a beer to pair with it, this'll do nicely: it does its bitter thing, and it does it well. Beyond that, though, there's not much need to bother. It's really not worth drinking on its own, and the roasted malts do get annoying after awhile.<br /><br />At this point I was faced with a problem: I wanted something to compare the Guinness to, and there aren't many other stouts with Irish ancestry around aside from the aforementioned Guinness Draught (which I avoid) and Beamish (which I couldn't find). I did find Murphy's Stout, though - four-packs were on sale at Binnys, and I snagged them. It comes in a can, too, which dutifully reports on its side that Murphy's is made in Edinburgh, <s>Scotland</s> Ireland. Should be interesting.<br /><br />Well, the head on this thing is just amazing - it bubbles up from the bottom and forms a frothy beige of about two fingers. It's absolutely beautiful. And the color, again, is totally black - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7DwNNW4Xfc">darker than black</a>, in fact. It's a stereotypical, picture perfect stout appearance, even moreso than the Guinness ES; it looks fantastic. And the nose... the nose is... oh, no. The first thing I notice is that it smells like sour barley. With a little bit of a roasted hue, maybe some lactose and some yeast. And... that's it. It's one of the dullest aromas I've had in awhile, not only in the sense that it's boring but that it actually feels like it's been blunted. Oh, man. I may have made a horrible mistake here.<br /><br />Onto the taste, where the misses just keep on coming. It's got a smooth consistency, to be sure, but it's also rather watery and unpleasant. Think skim milk. And the flavor? Bzzzt, sorry, there really isn't much. Somewhere - way way in the back - are some traditional Irish stout notes like roasted malts and cacao and a dry finish, but they've been so muted that there's almost nothing left. It's as if someone drew a stout with a pencil, and then erased it (but didn't completely finish the job). No, worse than that: seeing a half-erased stout right in front of one's eyes is still too direct an experience. Drinking Murphy's is like hearing your neighbor down the hall drink an Irish stout.<br /><br />There's just nothing here. No flavor, no alcohol (4% abv), barely any texture. It's a 16 ounce can of nada that happens to look good when you pour it. I'm not sure exactly what I can blame this on: the can? the apparent nitrogenation of the can? the Edinburghers? Who knows, and I suppose it doesn't really matter. If you like beers that look pretty, get yourself a four-pack asap. If you like good stouts, avoid this stuff like a SARS case.<br /><br />Really, Ireland, come on. You <i>invented</i> this style, and all you send us is a tasteless draught, a middling beer that any halfway-decent American microbrewer could better, and flavored stoutwater? We get drunk in celebration of your patron saint, dammit. You can do better than this. And until then, I think we should celebrate St. Patty's with stouts that are actually good - like Old #38, Black Hawk, Out of Bounds, or Black Sun, say.<br /><br /><b>Guinness Extra Stout</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: C<br /><b>Summary</b>: It's an Irish stout. It's roasty and a little dry. Meh.<br /><br /><b>Murphy's Stout</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: D-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Stout flavors dying cold and alone in a (very pretty) submarine, trapped at the bottom of an ocean.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-89307389241488004522010-03-16T22:52:00.002-05:002010-03-16T22:56:52.467-05:00Micreview: Lagunitas Cappucino StoutWell, it's paper-writing week here at the U, and that means I don't have time to conjure up any deep thoughts or big comparative things. Instead I've decided (in brief form) to give the whole "imperial stout with coffee" thing another chance. This may or may not be a horrible idea.<br /><br />The Lagunitas folks - who are, oddly enough, located about twenty miles north of Lagunitas, in Petaluma - may be from California, but they're fairly ubiquitous here in Illinois somehow. The Binnys website lists <i>18</i> of their beers, and I've yet to visit a reputable store without at least a few of their brews in stock. But aside from their IPA - which is almost architypically Californian, to a fault - I've never actually had any of these things. Tonight that changes. The <a href=http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/lagunitascoffe.jpg>goofy dog on the bottle</a> has sold me, and so I'm trying out their December seasonal: the Cappucino Stout. So, here we go.<br /><br />Well, it pours black (no surprise there), although when held up to a lamp I can detect some of the light still getting through. Funny enough, it's all ruby at the edges rather than brown. There's a cute little wheat-colored head, too, about a finger's worth, which then quickly dies away (this thing is north of 9% abv, after all). And the aroma - oh, happy days, they've done this one properly. Unlike the Breakfast Stout from Founders, which (you'll recall) I <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-founders-breakfast.html>kind of hated</a>, this one comes off as <i>really</i> well-balanced. The coffee is right out front, but kept under control by the addition of a thick ol' slab of sweet malts. Think of a slice of chocolate cake served with a cup of joe and you'll be close. And given a ton of agitation, I can actually detect some hops as well - which, for this kind of beer, is new to me. It's not a nose for the ages (I think I ultimately prefer the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/12/review-bluegrass-jeffersons-reserve.html>Kona Porter</a>), but it's still an unexpectedly pleasant one.<br /><br />The taste is quite a bit more varied, although it would be a stretch to say that anything about it is totally unexpected. At the front end and quite a ways beyond, this just comes across as a nice, extremely mild imperial stout: lots of bittersweet roasty malts and just a touch of dark fruit. As it moves towards the back of one's mouth, though, the coffee sweeps in like a German panzer brigade. Things get very bitter very fast as the bumble bean swarms over just about everything. And then, right after this, the hops try to push their way through - I can't really tell what sort they are, though, because they're clearly not making much headway against the onslaught. They do provide a lovely touch of dryness to the aftertaste, though, which is otherwise just coffee bitterness and a lingering chocolatey sweetness from the malts. As far as its texture, it comes across as rather thin for the style (not a motor oil, this) but still quite full-bodied and mouth-coating. It's pleasant, but not easy, to drink: you could easily spend a few hours on one bottle.<br /><br />Bottom line? I like it. It's not something I would drink every day and it still falls short of perfection here and there, but it's a fine beer all the same. It's a good one to split with a group of friends, really, as anyone but a seasoned veteran is going to have trouble finishing a full deuce-deuce of this stuff. It hasn't dethroned the Kona as my favorite coffee beer, but it adds new evidence against my assertion that the idea of such a thing is fundamentally misguided.<br /><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: The first imperial coffee stout I've ever had that actually works.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-20283385059990895712010-03-07T18:59:00.003-06:002010-03-07T19:04:42.609-06:00Brown Ale Throwdown: Sprecher Pub Brown Ale, Goose Island Nut Brown Ale, and Big Boss Bad Penny Brown AleYes, this is another one of those things where I pick three random representatives of a style and compare them. What can I say? I'm an academic, comparing approaches comes naturally. And heck, maybe more people will read the site if I can dig a minor niche for myself.<br /><br />First up is the Pub Brown Ale from Sprecher, a very English-sounding beer that <a href=http://www.sprecherbrewery.com/images/beer/thumb/bottle_pint/pa_pint_n_pint_cold.jpg>could not possibly look more German</a>. It's a pub ale with a big fuckin' griffin on a shield on the (16oz) bottle design, which just seems wrong somehow. Don't be fooled, though, this thing comes from neither side of the channel. Instead, Sprecher hails from the decidedly less European Glendale, Wisconsin; there they make a number of beers and sodas. I've never tried the beers, but I've had a few of the sodas. I wasn't wowed by their orange soda or ginger ale, but their root beer is heavenly; it'll never top the one from Boylan, which is as complex and serious and magnificent as a psych rock show, but the Sprecher is its sweeter, easy-to-drink alternative whenever I'm feeling a little punk. It's this root beer, then, that encouraged me to hunt down one of their beers (once I found out that they made some).<br /><br />Oh my, a twist-off cap. It's been a while since I've seen one of those.<br /><br />Well, it pours rather lightly, with a nice coppery color (not quite brown, but who's complaining) and a one-finger cream head that quickly dies off. It looks like a dark ginger ale, really. The aroma is very promising indeed: not much in the way of hops, but there's plenty of pale malts cut through with caramel, sassafras, and a little bit of earthiness. It's not particularly complex, but it's pleasant enough.<br /><br />Hm, the taste is in a solid B- territory. It's good stuff, it's the sort of thing I'd drink tons of during a night on the town - "pub ale" is exactly the right term. There's just no real sparkle, though. The front edge is a slightly pearlike sourness, which evolves into a nice soil-and-syrup sort of taste. It's basically your classic earthy/bready brown ale flavor profile. The hops, too, are pretty by-the-book, but they're way turned down even compared to the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/12/bell-thon-bells-rye-stout-special.html>Bell's brown ale</a> from a while back. Even the mouthfeel is light.<br /><br />So, then: Sprecher went for simple and mild, and they achieved it. For what it is, then, this brew is pretty good, although I wish they'd been a bit more ambitious. It does strike me as a perfect beer for at least one thing, though: converting the people who've been drinking Pabst their whole lives. Think of this, then, as a beginner beer, not so much a rival to the masters as a (superior) substitute for Newcastle.<br /><br />Onto the Goose Island Nut Brown, then, which I am on record as declaring not anywhere near as good as their Naughty Goose. It is cheaper and easier to come by, though, and that counts for something. Like all Goose Island brews (excepting the Christmas Ale), this is <a href=http://www.gooseisland.com/filebin/images/products/full/nut-brown-ale.jpg>immaculately packaged</a> in a lovely black-on-brown label. The boys with laptops deserve praise for this one. Also, I should note that I've been saving this bottle roughly since September, so it may be a bit old now.<br /><br />Well, it pours quite a bit darker than the Sprecher; sort of an auburn, rather than a rust. The head's a tad bit less intense, somewhere just north of a half-finger - I'm chalking this up to the slightly stronger 5.3% ABV. The aroma is <i>very</i> sweet, even sweeter than the Sprecher, but also less detailed (if that's possible). I mainly get caramel, lots and lots of it, with a touch of English hops mixed in. When given some agitation it opens up a tad more, offering more of a coffee aroma; but really, if you're looking for complexity this isn't your beer.<br /><br />With the taste, I'm feeling even more guilty for accusing the Sprecher of simplicity. This stuff is stupid simple. Most of the hops seem to come through in an initial bitter jab, after which there's nothing but thick milk chocolatey malts. The aftertaste is slightly more dry, but the rest of the time this stuff is shamelessly sugar-driven. And the texture is a bit heavier than the Sprecher as well, although by beer standards I'd still only call it medium-bodied. <br /><br />I like this beer; it's sweet and kind of unassuming, like the shy kid in class. <i>As a beer</i>, on its own, I'd rank it above the Sprecher, but it also doesn't seem to me to be much of a brown ale. In a lot of ways this is much more comparable to a really mild porter or a sweet stout. Thus it runs into something like the same problem as the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/12/review-flossmoor-station-pullman-brown.html>Flossmoor Pullman</a> I reviewed last year: it's a good beer, but if I really wanted a <i>brown ale</i> I'd have to go elsewhere.<br /><br />Last on my list is Bad Penny from Big Boss Brewing. This is another one I picked up from my trip east: these guys make their home in Raleigh, so good luck finding one of these suckers out in Chi-town. It's almost worth it entirely for the bottle alone, though, because it's <a href=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/3072561667_304399fd5a.jpg>fucking awesome</a>. It's like they took a movie poster from 1972 featuring a sassy sister making eyes, and just drained all the colors out of it except brown. Yes, I know that doesn't sound appealing, but it works. It even has a bottled-on date: November '09. Well, then - the Goose Island was still okay, so hopefully the months of mellowing have done some good here as well.<br /><br />It pours very easily indeed, with a moderate brown tone about halfway between the Sprecher and the Goose Island. The head is minimal - maybe a quarter finger tops. Even that's gone after a few seconds, leaving only an off-white floaty foam. The nose is actually quite similar to the other two as well. It's a lovely mix of caramel, nuttiness - well, hell, you've heard this before. I'd say it's right in between the other two, aroma wise, although closer to the Sprecher and perhaps a bit more subdued. <br /><br />But then there's the taste. Wow, it's not what I expected at all. What strikes me first is that it's surprisingly watery - not that the other two were ultra-creamy, but this one doesn't cover the mouth at all. That's not to say it's bad, though, because the taste makes up for it. It's strikingly bitter, much moreso than the others. Espresso grinds hit right up front and hold on tight while some malty, dark chocolate sweetness slides in behind them. Coffee remains the dominant flavor right up until the end, where the hops deliver an earthy little nibble and let things slide off. The aftertaste is surprisingly long, despite the watery texture: once again it's mostly bitter coffee and chocolate, with (maybe) some almonds to provide relief.<br /><br />For a night out with the boys I'd choose one of the other two; this is just a little too striking to work for that role. But it's got its own charms, and - in the end - I think I prefer it. Certainly I admire it more as a beer. Bad Penny is like the Bruce Lee of English browns: it packs the maximum amount of force into the minimal effort. It's not a heavy beer, yet features a flavor profile I've found lacking in brews going well into the 8% range. I'm not sure how much use the world has for a beer like this, and I'm not sure whether I myself will ever have it again. But I'm glad it exists.<br /><br />So: we've got a much narrower spread than I expected here, and not a bad beer in the lot. The Sprecher is boring but also unassuming, the workman of the group, while the Goose Island is pleasant and sweet (but not really properly brownalelich) and the Big Boss is a pint-sized monster (which is a little too watery and not great for pub nights). So: which one should you buy?<br /><br />Honestly? None of these. Well, try them once for shits and giggles, sure. But if you want a fantastic brown ale, buy the Samuel Smith or the Naughty Goose or Dogfish Head's India Brown. And if you want a relatively cheap, delicious, mild, easily available example of the style for poker nights, the correct decision is in fact Ellie's Brown from Avery. (You can't miss it, it's got an <a href=http://www.beerme.com/graphics/brewery/0/168/3243.jpg>adorable lab</a> on the label.) That's a beer I'll get around to reviewing it one of these days. As it is, though, these three - good as they are - can't beat the standard.<br /><br /><b>Sprecher Pub Brown Ale</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B-<br /><b>Summary</b>: A beginner's brown - not bad, just not all that much going on. Your dad will love it.<br /><br /><b>Goose Island Nut Brown Ale</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: Think of this as more of a sweet stout with English-style hops than a real brown. Still good, though.<br /><br /><b>Big Boss Bad Penny Brown Ale</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: The most creative and assertive beer here. Bittersweet, emphasis on the bitter. The wateriness really bugs me, though.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-28960882368412026212010-02-27T00:47:00.003-06:002010-02-27T01:06:23.091-06:00Review: Ridgeway Foreign Export StoutEver since I <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-reviews-goose-island.html>aced</a> the Lion Stout, I've had a nagging question. With the possible exception of Arcadia's Cocoa Loco - which is a somewhat different sort of beer - I'd never had an export stout before. And so, even though I was completely bowled over by the Sri Lanka slammer, there always remained a doubt about whether I really fell in love with the beer itself or with the style in general. Could it be that I'd just cornered the weakest member of a superior genus? Mightn't there be some other foreign stout out there which is even better? Thus, for a few months I've been keeping my eye out for something else of the same sort to compare the Lion with.<br /><br />Needless to say I found one, and here it is: the Ridgeway Brewing Foreign Export Stout. It wasn't cheap - a mere 16.9 oz bottle went for $5.50, half the price of a whole sixer of Lions - but in the interest of science and my own curiosity I thought I'd give it a try. Unlike its South Asian cousin, though, this stuff hails direct from England. That gives it a "pedigree," I suppose, if that matters (it doesn't). And somehow it makes it seem even more ridiculous than the Lion, which (horrible photoshopping considered) is already pretty far up there. Despite how much I enjoy the culture, not to mention the beer, of England, there are some things that just send me giggling and keep me there. For starters, the Ridgeway here comes from somewhere called South Stoke, Oxfordshire. When I look it up Google Maps disagrees, and insists that No, South Stoke is actually in Berkshire, not Oxfordshire. So South Stoke either doesn't actually know where it is, or one of these sources is wrong. Frankly I'm happy to allow South Stoke to be wherever it likes, though, since both counties sound equally ridiculous to my American ears. They sound like the sort of places famous for a 12th century battle between some peasants and the esteemed Baron Doddingerton over taxation procedures in the Chipping Kilmister region. Everyone who lives there either drives a Bentley already or at least wants one - except in Oxford, maybe.<br /><br />I kid, of course. They probably don't want them in Reading either.<br /><br />But really, I kid because the beer itself encourages it. There's not much information to be found on Ridgeway Brewing, but the importers happily report that "Ridgeway Brewery is named for the ancient road... that meanders along a low escarpment across the high, rolling pastoral plain that is the southwest of England." Oh my. And it goes on: "The now patchy stone surface of the Ridgeway was laid by Britain’s oldest inhabitants – Druids and the like – thousands of years before the Romans turned up to build their own roadways. It is the oldest road in the British Isles and Europe, running nearly 100 miles, past that other ancient landmark, Stonehenge..." Okay, I'm stopping there, because if they pour any more of the Tradition thing on me I will probably start heaving. Yes, England is Old and your beer has history and Britishness and so on, we know.<br /><br />On the outside, though, it really <i>does</i> have Britishness. I mean, blimey, just <a href=http://users.jyu.fi/~mweber/blog/images/Ridgeway_Foreign_Export_Stout.jpg>look</a> at the bottle. It could only be more English if they'd somehow shaped the cap into the Spirit of Ecstasy. As a result, I'm expecting this stuff to taste like a mossy 9th century castle; whether that'll be a good or bad thing, I don't know. (But I'm eager to see.)<br /><br />Well, here goes.<br /><br />Nice - it pours a rich chocolate color, with a fine and proud three-finger tan head. I'm suddenly kicking myself for not having any Elgar on hand as accompaniment. The aroma is really lovely too - my closest point of reference is the Lion Stout, of course, but this is a bit more fruity and sweet, with way less cacao. Back behind the fruitiness is a mild toffee smell, intermixed with some earthy hops. It's a deep and musky aroma, really, like you might expect the Lake District to smell. It's not an amazing nose - it's actually a little too laid back, really - but it's pretty nice, and very British. Let's give it a sip or two.<br /><br />Oh, that's scrumptious. Compared (again) to the Sri Lankan entry the taste is definitely several ranks sweeter, but it still maintains a bitter edge which (I assume) is characteristic of its species. There's some dark chocolate up front, which expands into a sweet but more espresso-like taste as it moves back. This is about where the fruitiness (prunes, mostly) from the nose comes in as well, although it's pretty well manhandled by the espresso. Then there's the hops, which arrive hauling nuts, soil, and that odd minty note I'm coming to associate with whole leaf hops. Finally, the aftertaste features whatever espresso has hung on from before plus the minty-soily hops. As far as texture goes, that too is like the Lion. Both are creamy but also quite carbonated, and these facts balance out nicely. It's a very easy beer to drink, especially for an eight percenter, but not so easy that you can unintentionally get yourself in trouble.<br /><br />So by now you should already have some suspicion of the verdict. Is it a good beer? Yes, absolutely. I like it a lot, and if I could get a sixer of it around the $9 mark it would quickly go into my regular rotations. Hell, in a world without Sri Lanka I'd even be willing to drop six bucks on one every now and then. The trouble, obviously, is that as good as this is, a cheaper and even better brew is out there waiting to steal its blood pudding. As fine and English a beer as this is, the Lion Stout is somehow even moreso. It comes across as older, more earthy, more massive - and less user-friendly too, and by God better for it. Plus it's cheaper. Plus it's easier to find. So, basically on every level that matters the Lion is a better choice. Unless you really want a beer that's slightly sweeter, there's no reason to buy the Ridgeway. The English fought them in the brewing... and they lost.<br /><br />So, to answer my question from before: yes, the Lion Stout really is that good. On the other hand, discovering and trying the Ridgeway has left me with a new puzzlement: why, exactly, did it take me this long to find another friggin' stout of this style? Why are so few breweries making them? I mean, just <a href=http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/95/>take a look</a> at the beers available. Aside from the Lion, how many of these have you ever actually witnessed in the wild? Personally, I can recall seeing Fade to Black last year, and I know I spotted Reaper's entry somewhere or other. That's all. And this is still the case even when most of the sizeable microbreweries in the US (I suspect - haven't done the math) sell an imperial stout or two. The shelves are full of the damn things, in every variation anyone could want - 8% or 18% ABV, with chocolate, vanilla, and/or coffee thrown in, made with oatmeal or milk sugar, aged in barrels, whatever. Now, I love imperial stouts to a fault, but all of this still gets a bit stale after awhile. So why is it - with a earthier, mellower, possibly even more interesting, but equally powerful close relative of that style right on hand - that almost no one has bothered to switch things up? Why are there only a handful of American microbreweries selling these brews, leaving the Sri Lankans and the British as our main options?<br /><br />I have to believe that I'm not the only person who adores this style. Other folks out there, perhaps, are also getting a bit bored with the parade of 40 proof Earl Grey-infused rum-barrel-aged hopheady stouts. So step up, brewers, it's time for something a little different. Give the Sri Lankans a scare or two.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B+<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: Like the Lion Stout, except sweeter and less interesting. And nearly three times as expensive.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-83477134216987909012010-02-25T22:33:00.005-06:002010-02-26T22:25:22.124-06:00Vacation Roundup: Starr Hill The Love and Dark StarrCharlottesville is probably my favorite town (well, city) in Virginia. Admittedly, this probably isn't saying much. Everywhere around DC is more or less a suburban office park nightmare, absorbing all the petty malice and mutual unconcern radiating off of I-495 - the notorious Capital Beltway, the most hateful road on the east coast and an entity which feeds from the souls of all existing within many miles of it. The Virginia Beach area is a Navy town and a tourist trap, making me feel doubly out of place. Roanoke is located in the mountains (a plus), but is otherwise a bit boring somehow. Richmond is, well, hopeless. I'm tempted to pick Luray (foothill heaven, and mere miles away from Skyline Drive and the astonishing US-211, i.e. two of the best roads in Virginia), or maybe Leesburg or Williamsburg (for the simple joy of the colonial architecture). But on points, it's gotta be Charlottesville. It does the historic town thing almost as well, it's close to the mountains, it's actually got some culture, and they even like to drink a little. But this raises a question: can they brew a good beer?<br /><br />To find out, I bought a pair of brews from Starr Hill while I was out east a few months back. The Starr Hill brewery is actually located a few miles west of Charlottesville (in Crozet), and they're surprisingly ubiquitous in the mideast states (I found some sixers of these as far down as North Carolina). I've got a The Love, which is a hefeweizen with a silly name, and a Dark Starr, which is a dry stout. So, let's start with the wheatbeer first.<br /><br />Here's the first bit of news: the label is <a href=http://www.starrhill.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/beer_label/theLoveWheatLabel.jpg>pink</a>. At their <a href=http://www.starrhill.com/beer/love>site</a> for the beer Starr Hill boasts that this stuff is made from an award-winning German yeast handed over by a friend. Someone "shared the love" with them, get it? Yes, yes, we see the pun, fine. But I would have titled the beer "Starr Hill Thank You," made the cover a big thumbs up to Germany, and saved myself the trouble. And I certainly wouldn't have made the label pink. Gah.<br /><br />Pour it into a glass, though, and things start to get better: it's got a lovely cloudy-gold look, pretty much standard for the style, with a nice yeasty two-finger white head. And it's a sticky head too: with an ABV of only 4.6% (on the low side by wheatbeer standards), there's really not much to pull it back down. The aroma is very lemon-limey, with a hit of yeast further back; agitate it a bit and it shifts more in a banana direction. It's quite a simple aroma for a weiss, but there's nothing that's turning me off so far.<br /><br />The taste carries through on the promise of the lemony aroma - it's a kind of yeasty lemonade, although obviously without the sweetness. Right up front is a pleasant tarty tang, which maintains itself right up to the end. Around there a wheaty taste butts in, along with some cloves and cilantro. No real hoppiness here, although I wasn't expecting it. The aftertaste, for the most part, is just more citrusy goodness. And... frankly, I'm struggling to think of anything more to say. Body's pretty light. No sense of the alcohol at all. It's a very refreshing taste, as these sorts of things tend to be, but there's also nothing at all to set this apart from the crowd.<br /><br />Well, I didn't taste much love to be honest, but it's not bad. There's only one way to describe The Love: it is a Hefeweizen. And that means: if you like hefeweizens, you will think this one's pretty okay. It will do just fine by you, and you will immediately forget it exists after you finish drinking it. Such is its fate.<br /><br />Now, onto the Dark Starr Stout. Unlike the self-consciously goofy The Love, this beer's a little more serious. The bottle's all <a href=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3579/3458452084_27aff330bf.jpg?v=0>murdered out</a>, looking scary and muscular like a 1974 Challenger. Check the stats, though, and you discover that this black-bottled terror is actually a bit of a softie: it's 4.81% ABV, only a touch above Guinness and Murphy's (heck, the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-mendocino-black-hawk.html>Black Hawk</a> - still my go-to dry stout - is well into the low 5% range). So I'm expecting this to be more of a pub beer, more of a filling but unobtrusive bit of black matter that'll provide just the slightest lubricant for an evening with the boys.<br /><br />Oh. Man, that's not what this is at all.<br /><br />It's black, to be sure; it's got a medium viscosity and a half-finger head, to be sure; but this isn't a good old fashioned Irish stout. The aroma is, well, not what I expected at all. The strangest thing to the aroma is a strong, almost <i>meaty</i> quality, as if there's some grilled pork in there or something. It's not something I've encountered before, and I don't really dig it. Beyond that there's some coffee, lots of roasted malts, and an odd sourness that I can't pin down. <br /><br />And the taste? Err, well, it's dry, give it that much. But beyond that everything's gone wrong. For starters, it's incredibly watery. The sourness from the aroma is also here (not something I really want in a stout). And then there's the worst part: from the very first sip one is inundated with a consistently cloying, smokey, ashy taste. Way back there, behind the wall of smoke, I can tell there are some good traditional stouty flavors, but there's really no digging them out. The aftertaste is indeed dry, but that's not enough to chase away the unpleasant smoky-sourness<br /><br />If ever one needed a textbook example of how not to use roasted malts, this would be it. I suppose it's unique, sure, but it's not good, especially if you plan on drinking a whole bottle. (Starr Hill touts this as their "most awarded beer." I can only assume the judges all just did the sip-and-spit thing, because there's no way they would have medal'd this stuff if they'd had to suck down 12 ounces of it.) It's a watery, burned-out answer to a question no one asked. If you really want a smoky beer, try an Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen; if you really want a dry stout from Virginia, try to broaden your horizons.<br /><br />So: Charlottesville. Nice town, and they make not-so-great stouts and also a Hefeweizen. I'll see if I can learn more on my next trip, I guess.<br /><br /><b>Starr Hill The Love</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B-<br /><b>Summary</b>: It meets hefeweizen expectations.<br /><br /><b>Starr Hill Dark Starr</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: C-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Not so much a dry stout as a watery, ashy mess. Unique enough for the curious, but unpleasant to finish.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-16258682293037154282010-02-20T22:54:00.003-06:002010-02-21T12:22:18.453-06:00Review: Dogfish Head Punkin AleI'd like to talk for a bit about impossibility.<br /><br />"Impossible" is, philosophically, a translation of the Greek adunatos. To be "dunatos" in the typical sense is to be strong, i.e. fit and able-bodied; in an extended sense it means to have a <i>capacity</i>, to be able to do something. Dunamis is "power," but not power in the general sense. It's always a power of a very specific sort: the power of a shoemaker to produce shoes, the power of a seed to grow into a tree, the power of 3 to become 9 when squared. But that same 3 cannot become 4 or 16 when squared, and <i>to this extent</i> it is adunatos - incapable. It cannot support the possibility, it cannot bear it. The seed too, will not support ever being-at-work growing into a castle or a dinosaur; the situation, as it were, cannot be borne by the entity. And when Aristotle famously states the single most basic principle (archē) of philosophy, he uses this very term: "To gar auto ama huparchein te kai mē huparchein adunaton tōi autō kai kata to auto." (1005b) This is a difficult and controversial passage to translate ("huparchein" is extremely ambiguous), but I submit: "for the same thing is incapable of both being and not being in a single moment, for itself and according to itself." But despite this being Aristotle's "most firm principle," I think we have to consider it as grounded in something even more basic - namely, the very concept of dunamis and the dunaton developed in <i>Metaphysics</i> IX. I won't try to deal with that discussion here, but suffice it to say that I consider it probably the single most important text in the history of Western philosophy.<br /><br />Aristotle's statement has come down to us, of course, as the principle of noncontradiction, and although there have been subtle and important shifts in the content (many of which would have puzzled Aristotle, I think) it retains its status as something fundamental. Capacity has become possibility - now defining less what entities can do, and more whether and which entities can <i>be</i> at all. And the principle of noncontradiction quite often defines the space of possibility <i>as such</i> - "whatever is self-identical is able to exist." It usually defines the space for <i>logical</i> possibility, at least, i.e. it defines which propositions may concievably be true and which not. But of course, over the years philosophers have added additional limits to possibilities. Things may be impossible as willed by God, impossible by reason of a lacking cause, impossible by natural law, and (in Kant) impossible by the conditions of possible experience.<br /><br />Let us consider this last one, what Kant calls "The Highest Principle of All Synthetic Judgments": "every object stands under the necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience." (A158 B197) Since the project of the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> is famously to establish how it is possible that we know and experience objects <i>at all</i> - which turns out to amount to the question of how a priori synthesis is possible - then then this little stretch of text is fundamental to that project. The conditions of experience - whether that experience be concrete or an imagination of sorts - determines what and whether an object of experience can be. It's the chief work of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements to determine what those conditions are. By doing so, one can precisely establish the limits of experiential as well as epistemic possibility.<br /><br />Here one runs into a problem, especially obvious in Kant but (I think) probably common to everyone who attempts to determine the limits of the possible. How is it <i>possible</i> to establish what is possible? So far as I can tell, there are two available roads (Kant uses both). The first is to set down a <i>law</i> a priori from which one can derive various consequences. The second is the process that we now call "transcendental argument."<br /><br />A "transcendental argument" is not, strictly speaking, an argument. It does not present premises from which one can derive consequences - or, at any rate, if it were then it couldn't do the sort of work Kant needs it to do. This "argument" consists rather in a curious form of <i>projection</i>, of the fantasy of a certain sort of experience. (I suspect it is finally no different in kind from what Husserl names as "eidetic variation.") We project ourselves into an experience and, as it were, attempt to determine the <i>limits</i> of the experience itself. We ask ourselves whether it is conceivable to experience in certain ways at all. The "argument" of Kant's second analogy, for example, does not conclude that experience is bound by the laws of causality because of some feature of the concepts involved. The point, brutely put, is: "Look, you can be skeptical all you want, but imagine yourself in a real situation watching the manifold sequence of events involved in billiard balls hitting each other. Now try to imagine that there is <i>no succession at all</i>. Not that the individual perceptions occur in a new order, but that there is simply no order. There is nothing wrong with the mere <i>concept</i> of this, but does it still make sense to think of these as events at all? Can we meaningfully think of perceptions without succession as experience?" The answer is supposed to be "no" - thus we admit temporal succession, i.e. causality, as a necessary condition for experience.<br /><br />But if this is the method of transcendental argument, then it is open to an extremely simple criticism. In the end, there are quite a lot of things which we fail to "conceive" before the fact - falling in love, drinking an extraordinary Scotch, witnessing the collapse of Lehman Brothers - but this does not keep them from <i>happening</i>. And they do happen; they throw themselves at us despite our never seeing them in advance. And if impossibility here is tantamount to inconceivability, then one must conclude that the impossible happens every day. (One might establish "gradations" of impossibility, but that would be all.) Of course, one could counter that the inconceivability of non-successive experience is not the same as the inconceivability of a financial disaster. One might argue that there is a difference between what has not been thought by one person, or even by anyone, and what cannot be thought <i>at all</i>. But it is utterly questionable whether this is a distinction any of us could legitimately make. After all, it is <i>me</i> who participates in transcendental argumentation, not some grand overmind: if I cannot conceive something, I also cannot establish in advance which sort of non-conceiving I have run into. If we are to set down this distinction nevertheless, then we must turn to another method. We must take it as a <i>principle</i>.<br /><br />There is, so far as I am aware, no serious criticism of the first <i>Critique</i> more common than: "Where exactly does the Table of Judgments come from??" That is, where does Kant get the source from which the deduction of the basic categories of experience is supposed to proceed? It's a very good criticism; Kant himself admits that he does not know (it's the mark of an uncommonly honest philosopher that he does this). In the end he simply lifts it from the tradition he's supposed to be critiquing and, thus, dogmatically takes the whole basis for the Transcendental Logic for granted. And I suspect one runs into the same question anytime one wishes to establish a law that will decide, once and for all, what is and is not possible. One can always just turn the <i>quid juris</i> back against the very thing that's supposed to establish the right in the first place. To be sure, dogmatic presuppositions of this sort can do quite a lot of work and they can be quite plausible, but ultimately they shall remain somewhat unsatisfactory. They will <i>always</i> be questionable, even if one has never heard of the epochē or Husserl's principle of principles.<br /><br />Let us go back and reconsider Aristotle. His archē reads, once again: "The same thing is incapable of both being and not being in a single moment, for itself and according to itself." Is this a <span style="font-style:italic;">principle</span>, asserted dogmatically? Initially it may look that way, but I think this is inaccurate. For one thing, Aristotle musters considerable phenomenological evidence to support his case, especially in <i>Metaphysics</i> IV.4. But it can also be seen simply from another line that closely follows the principle and, as it were, anchors it: "adunaton gar hontinoun tauton hupolambanein einai kai mē einai," "for it is unbearable to believe that the same thing can be and not be." Aristotle's entire proof of the principle amounts to demonstrating that this cannot be "believed," i.e. that one just cannot experience matters in that way. It thus amounts to a kind of transcendental argument - the same sort as before. But if that's so, then it is ultimately vulnerable to precisely the same criticisms as any other such "argument." Even noncontradiction, then, must run up against our inability to firmly draw a line between the absolutely impossible and the individually (or even universally) inconceivable.<br /><br />Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that everything is possible. This is exactly the reverse of my conclusion. There are possibilities, and there "are" impossibilities. This line is drawn by what is thinkable. But if I erase the second line between inconceivability and absolute impossibility, I do so not only on the basis of a good argument which is, however, entirely negative. I also do so because there are important, <i>positive</i> phenomenological consequences. The extraordinary thing is this: if impossibility is indeed tantamount to the unthinkable, the inconceivable - i.e., if we cannot justify any distinction between the two - then we will indeed <i>experience</i> the impossible to the same extent that we experience the unexpected. Perhaps this only happens for a moment, or even less; perhaps in the same instant that the impossible happens it retroactively inscribes itself into the field of the possible so that, as in Kant, there is an unbroken succession of reason. Nevertheless the impossible does happen. If that seems outrageous to common sense, I agree, but I think it's phenomenologically accurate nevertheless. The real work is to try to describe exactly what happens in those moments - as it were, to articulate <i>how</i> it is that the impossible gives itself to us. But that's work for a whole lifetime.<br /><br />Now, all of this brings me to Dogfish Head.<br /><br />If impossibility has a friend in the world of brewing, that friend is surely Dogfish Head. As a brewery, it's experimental to a fault and beyond. They are constantly pushing the edge on what we think beer can be, and depending on your taste this can be a good or a bad thing. Me, I love them. I love them more than I love other breweries that, overall, make better beer, precisely because I know these guys will always surprise me. Beer made with raisins and peaches? SURE. A stout pushing 40 proof? WHY NOT. A recreation of something we scraped out of 2700 year old steins? DAMN RIGHT. One gets the sense that they won't be happy until they break out of beermaking entirely and end up in some other kind of medium. The results probably fail more often than they succeed - but they're also never boring.<br /><br />This here is Punkin, a brown ale brewed with pumpkins which is apparently the first beer they ever made. From the website: "Punkin Ale made it's debut as it claimed First Prize in the 1994 Punkin Chunkin Recipe Conest - yes, that was a full 6 months before we even opened our doors for business." As such, it seems like a good subject for a first review of their catalog. I'd almost forgotten that I had one of these until yesterday; it's getting on a little agewise (they brew this stuff at the beginning of fall), but I'm looking forward to trying it. My only other experience with a pumpkin ale is the Ichabod Ale by New Holland, which I found decidedly "meh."<br /><br />Well, it pours a funky orange-amber with a finger's worth of fairly thin white head (no lacing from this sucker - that stuff is strictly carbonation). Good God, I can smell the aroma from here. And "pumpkin" isn't the first thing that comes to mind, although as I stick my head in - whew! - I can certainly detect it. The initial impression is more of a sharp, penetrating fruitiness, mellowed out by good old fashioned ale malts. It's like a pale ale that's been shot through with a cross-section of supermarket produce. And I can also detect a goodly bit of spice in here - mainly nutmeg, although the bottle informs me that there's also allspice and cinnamon. This is definitely not something I've smelled before - I'm not sure if I like it, but it's surely unique. <br /><br />Wow, that's different... hmmm. Hmmmmm.<br /><br />Well, first off, the beer is quite a bit thinner than I thought it would be. I was expecting more of the usual touch of brown ale creaminess, but it's actually rather watery. Second off, it's surprisingly boozy. This brew is a seven-percenter, which is high for a "brown ale" but pretty mild by my standards. The problem is that it doesn't hide it <i>at all</i>. Subtlety is not this beer's strong suit; if you're trying to get someone drunk on the sly, this is not the beer to do it with.<br /><br />As for the taste itself, it's a bit of a rollercoaster. A fun one, no doubt, but one that will end in seasickness for a few among the riders. I <i>admire</i> this taste, but I don't think I like it. On the front end it seems like any other amber or pale ale - you get a sweet kiss of malt with a little bit of sour thrown in. Towards the middle things start to get weird. The usual caramel flavors are there, but a massive streak of herby dry bitterness rides right on top of them. That would be the spices, I expect. By the swallow said spices have taken over completely - there's a yeasty snap in the aftertaste, and then all that's left is a rather vegetable-like bitter mouth coating. Funny as hell, I don't actually taste any pumpkin here. I taste your regular run-of-the-mill ale malts, your crazy spice rack contents, and that's about all. No real fruit character through the entire thing.<br /><br />If you like, you can divide Dogfish Head beers into four categories. The first is the standards; the second is the beer styles that they haven't drastically fucked with, but maybe tried to improve; the third is the radical experiments that succeeded; the fourth is the experiments that failed, but remain interesting. Punkin falls squarely into the fourth category - more of a Raison D'Etre than an Immort Ale or an India Brown. It's special enough to try once, but now that I've done it I don't think I'd bother a second time.<br /><br />So, not a great beer, then. Is it going to put me off of Dogfish Head? Hell no. If I want a good solid beer that's going to coddle me for the night, well, there's lots of other breweries I can turn to. But if I want something that gives me a glimpse of impossibility - well, by that measure they're the best in the business.<br /><br /><b>Grade</b>: C+<br /><b>Summary</b>: A very boozy amber ale and some fall spices meet up and cohabitate. Not very good, but try it anyways.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-5814797167353045302010-02-13T17:59:00.009-06:002010-03-22T20:20:56.757-05:00The Doppel-Off: Ayinger Celebrator, Weihenstephaner Korbinian, and Birra Moretti La RossaOkay, stop me if you've heard this one before. Two Germans and an Italian walk into a bar...<br /><br />...(the punchline is fascism).<br /><br />Welcome back to my lonely blog. I've been away doing lots of work and being very sick, very often. Happily, I'm squared away for the moment and I finally have a chance to do a little comparison I've had in the works.<br /><br />So here's the thing: I realized that I've yet to do any lager reviews. This should seem strange to the vast majority of Americans (according to Americans, the only beer drinkers who count), who are unaware that any other sorts of beer exist at all. Or that the word "lager" itself indicates something other than a guy who cuts down trees. It's a niche that my website should fill if it wants to be respectable, and so I'm gonna review some lagers. Oh <i>boy</i> am I gonna review some lagers. Thing is, what I've got in mind are indeed lagers. but they're also exactly the sorts of beers from which the typical American beer drinker would recoil in horror. Yup: today I'm doing doppelbocks.<br /><br />Dopplebocks are the anti-Budweisers of the lager world. Save for a couple of oddities (double pilsners, eisbocks, and malt liquors being my favorites) no other style of lager matches them for sheer knockdown power. Instead of being pale, light, fizzy, and American, these things are dark, heavy, moody, and very - very - south German. It's like drinking Friedrich Schiller, and I absolutely love the things. They're my favorite style of lager by far, and - more importantly - their very existence shows just how good these humble bottom-fermenting brews can be when they're made with some TLC and not shot through with corn and rice.<br /><br />To give the style a good showing, I'm writing up one of my old favorites (La Rossa) and two I've never had before (Celebrator and Korbinian). These by no means exhaust the style. I wanted to find several others that I enjoy, particularly some Americans (Capital's Autumnal Fire and whatever the heck the Victory one is called), so I went on a doppelhunt to various shops around Chi-town. Alas, no dice. That leaves the Germans, the Italian, and whatever their plans are for world domination.<br /><br />If I was hoping for a range of variation, the bottles alone are encouraging. The Celebrator is probably my favorite, in that it is <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Ayinger_celebrator_db.jpg">unabashedly pagan</a>. The label features goats standing around a gigantic glass of beer, performing who-knows-what ritual. Actually, goats seem to be a running theme here, as each (expensive) bottle comes with its own little plastic goat figure on a string. It's rad; I plan to use mine as a Christmas ornament. All of this makes the Celebrator one of my favorite bottle designs ever; you just can't beat alcoholic goats for setting the mood. But if the Celebrator is shamelessly pagan, then the Korbinian is its <a href="http://www.bierenco.nl/media/images/t-z/Korbinian.jpg">Catholic counterpart</a>. Right above the brewery name is a bishop of some sort, apparently offering the beer a benediction. There are also some flags I don't recognize and - of course - there's a bear. This is Germany we're talking about, after all. Overall, the Korbinian comes off as even more Bavarian than than the Celebrator - hell, it's more Bavarian than Benedict XVI. As compared with the theological leanings of its two more expensive Teutonic cousins, then, La Rossa has <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3524/4042654288_4ab91a6af5.jpg">a mustachio'd guy in a suit and trilby drinking a pint</a>. This comes across as delightfully secular. Like the other two, though, it wears its national identity on its sleeve - or are the red, green, and white borders not enough of a hint for you?<br /><br />So, let's deal with the Ayinger contribution first. In terms of alcohol content, it's the weakest (6.7%); in terms of price, it's the most expensive ($3.29 for 11.2 oz.). On the other hand, it's among the top fifty beers in the world according to our friends at BeerAdvocate, and the only lager there that's available in any wide degree. So, let's give it a shot.<br /><br />Aaand my doubts are put to rest the moment I pour it. Holy damn this one looks good. Celebrator pours a dark russet color, with a frisky one-finger tan head. There's a surprisingly complex aroma here, not the sort of thing you expect from a lager. I get a ton of thick yeasty malts first of all, but behind it there's actually some fruit as well - raisin, maybe, and some other stuff that's tougher to pin down. No real hints as to the hops here, but then this isn't really that kind of lager. And speaking of lagerness, it very surely is one: it's got that slight sourness to its nose that lets you know exactly what kind of beast it is.<br /><br />The taste. Dear lord, it's good. Where has this beer been all my life.<br /><br />It's a massive explosion of flavors, like biting into a really spicy sandwich. Along with the bready textures I get sweet molasses, ginger, some vanilla, even some nuttiness. Then, at the end, a bite from the hops comes out of nowhere and cuts things wide open. The aftertaste takes yet another turn, where it becomes almost minty - or at any rate, there's definitely some incredible herbal notes. There's more fruitiness here, as well (raisins? prunes, maybe?). And despite this incredible succession of flavors, the beer remains impossibly smooth.<br /><br />Celebrator is eye-openingly, mouth-gapingly, hair-raisingly fantastic. There's no doubt in my mind that it's the best lager I've ever had up to this point, and now it's only a question as to whether one of the others is going to take that title away from it. It's absolute magic. Nothing so exciting, so varied, so anti-boring should be this drinkable, especially when it's a lager. It has a flavor profile that other beers can only dream of, and yet (if you didn't mind being broke) you could easily put away four of these in a sitting with no problem at all. Unbelievable. It gets an A+ - not because you couldn't ever do a lager better than this, but because I can't imagine what such a monster would be like.<br /><br />Onto the Korbinian. How the hell do you follow something like that? I hope to hell the Weihenstephaners have something in these 500 milliliters of abbey brewery goodness that will match their neighbors; otherwise this isn't even going to deserve the name "comparison."<br /><br />So. At 7.4% abv, the Korbinian is the strongest beer here. While it's not exactly cheap ($3.29 for a pint and change), it's still better than the Celebrator. And, most importantly, it's equally Bavarian. Let's give it a spin, then.<br /><br />First off, it pours a rather odd color - not an unpleasant one, just odd. Rather than brown, it's more like a very dark orange. There's also a finger or so of creme-colored head, which quickly dies down (a victim of the abv, one suspects). And the aroma is - well, wonderful really. Like the Celebrator, it's a surprisingly busy nose. A crisp chocolate milk smell from the malts is center stage; there's also some toffee, along with a fruitiness that's hard to identify. On my best guess, I'd say red grapes. More surprisingly, this beer is completely lacking in that sour lagery smell that I found in the Celebrator. If you didn't tell me different, I'd have taken this for an ale. Maybe they used a funky yeast of some sort.<br /><br />Wow, that's good. It's not nearly as complex as the Ayinger - no, take it back, complexitywise it's not even in the same building as the Ayinger - but it has charms of its own. Korbinian is delicious maltiness all the way through, but more amazing is its much creamier texture. This is a mouth-filling beer of the best sort, with a flavor that coats everything and lingers forever. And it does so without even toeing the border on being too heavy (although it still comes across as the heaviest beer in this comparison). It's wonderful, lovely, fantastic. The maltiness, unlike with the Celebrator, is really all that's here, but it's a very multidimensional maltiness. There's milk chocolate and dates most of the way through, and things round themselves off in the aftertaste with a move towards a (slightly more sour and bitter) strawberry ice cream flavor. It's quite sweet, but I'm not complaining. And, just to make a point of it, I have no sense of the extra alcohol at all.<br /><br />Amazingly, the Korbinian is <i>almost</i> as good as the Celebrator. They're extremely different beers, of course: one is spicy and insane, the other creamy and mellow. I love them both. I prefer the Celebrator, but some part of me senses that it's based more on personal preference than objective fact. I can easily imagine someone of good taste picking the Korbinian instead. Basically I prefer the Celebrator in the same way that I prefer Mercedes over Audis, or vanilla ice cream over chocolate. You can't really provide good reasons for these things.<br /><br />Finally, there's humble La Rossa. Birra Moretti is nestled way up in the north of Italy in Bergamo - near the Austrians, in fact, who seem to have taught them a thing or two about brewing. It's now owned by Heineken, oddly enough, and that fact combined with Heineken's ownership of Murphy's and Affligem may accidentally make Heineken the producer of several beers that are actually good. No matter who makes it, though, La Rossa is (at $8 a sixer) by far the cheapest brew here, and easily one of the best bang-for-your-buck beers in Chicago. Heck, at 7.2% alcohol, it's almost as good for a cheap drunk as the Mendocino stuff. And, mind you, I'm not really expecting this working-class Italian to measure up to the Bavarian aristocrats. All the same, I'm curious to see how much good one can get at this price.<br /><br />Like the Korbinian, La Rossa pours an odd orange-brown tone. Unlike the Korbinian, it's a much lighter color; also unlike the other two, there's tons of carbonation. You get a two-finger head for a start, one that's quite a lot more resilient than the others. It's got that same sweet malty aroma, but sadly there's nowhere near the complexity. The slightly sour lager smell I was missing from the Korbinian? It's back!! Aside from that, butterscotch is the main note, along with a touch of bready yeast. Miracle of miracles, I can also detect some hops in this: I can't place them, but they feature a nice kind of raisiny spice.<br /><br />Well, in terms of taste, if you can think of the Korbinian as being akin to an English stout, then this is more like an Irish one. It's lighter and less sweet, with a much drier finish. There's a bitter sting on the tongue at first, and then the malts enter with a wave of caramel and smoky sweetness. Make that <i>very</i> smoky, in fact. The hops at the end are perfectly balanced against this - they come bearing a strange, almost sour yogurt note, though. The aftertaste is pleasantly dry and earthy.<br /><br />I didn't expect this to be as good as the others, and it isn't. On the other hand, it's a fine beer by its own merits - maybe even more versatile in its own way (I wouldn't dare try eating anything alongside the other two, but this brew would go perfectly while munching on a swiss cheese sandwich or something). It's lighter than the Korbinian, but still has a really buttery, mouth-coating texture. And that's pretty nice now, in the midst of winter, but in August I think I'd find it cloying. It's not a perfect beer by any stretch, then, but for what it is I'd call it a solid success. And for the price, I'm hard-pressed to think of a better deal in Chicago if you're in the mood for a damn good lager.<br /><br />To conclude, I really like all three of these beers. If I'd been able to find them, I'm sure I would have loved the Capital and Victory takes on the style as well. These are the lagers of lagers, giants wandering a sandbox filled with limp-wristed fizzy wimps. No God-fearing Bud drinker would ever touch any of these suckers, but for my money they represent the redeeming moment of half of the beer world. Friends, let us go out and drink us some lagers.<br /><br /><b>Ayinger Celebrator</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A+<br /><b>Summary</b>: Complex. A rollercoaster of malts and hops and the sort of things witches keep in their cabinets. Despite all that, you could drink it every day.<br /><br /><b>Weihenstephaner Korbinian</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A<br /><b>Summary</b>: Sweet and creamy, like drinking a bar of milk chocolate. If the chocolate had really amazing fruity notes, anyways.<br /><br /><b>Birra Moretti La Rossa</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: Drier, simpler, and somewhat more ragged. Not really in the same league as the others, but a fine budget choice.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-14202298254462021442010-01-18T01:00:00.002-06:002010-01-18T01:04:07.267-06:00The Gran(d)-Off, Addendum: Grand Marnier vs. Gran Gala vs. Gran Torres vs. Harlequin vs. La Belle Orange vs. Tuaca(<i>This here is an addition to my <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/grand-off-grand-marnier-vs-gran-gala-vs.html>comparison</a> from a few months ago; I'm adding the text below to that post, as well as giving it its own fair shot at the front page. Enjoy!</i>)<br /><br />So it's now about two months after my initial Gran(d)-Off comparison of various brandy-based orange liqueurs. I concluded that Grand Marnier was the smoothest, Gran Gala was (by a nose) the best for mixing, and Torres was the most interesting for sipping and the best booze all-round. I was never fully satisfied with the results, though, for two reasons. First, those three bottles by no means exhausted the sheer mass of the liqueurs of this sort on the market. The main impetus to go back to this comparison and add some more shit was discovering two (2) new bottles - Harlequin and La Belle Orange - during my trip east for the holidays, and also buying a fifth of Tuaca in a moment of weakness. I now have <i>six</i> bottles of this stuff to work through (pity me); more importantly, it means I may have to reassess the standings from before. Second, I was less than satisfied with my choice of cocktail from the last time, namely, the margarita. I have since discovered, through some experimentation, that this is just not a good drink for investigating these liqueurs. A typical margarita needs something direct, highly orangey, and very sweet - it needs triple sec, in other words, not something that gives away brute strength for brandy subtlety. As far as classic cocktails go, <i>sidecars</i> tend to work much, much better with these liqueurs, so that's what I'm using this time around.<br /><br />So, this addendum will do two things. First, I'd like to sip these three new bottles and see how they compare to the earlier ones. Second, I want to retest <i>all</i> the liquors' mixing potential in a simple bourbon sidecar. Everything gets a new grade at the end, and we come one step closer to knowing where we stand when it comes to orange-infused brandies.<br /><br />If any one of these liquors is going to get you accused of being a horrible cheapskate, it's Harlequin. It screams "IMPORTED FROM FRANCE" just about everywhere, but looking at the label from a distance you'd think it was a $10 fifth of bottom-shelf whiskey. From the goofy jester design to the fake wax seal, it just <a href=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3369905960_84a7ac7e3c.jpg>looks kind of sad</a>. No mention at all of who actually makes this stuff, but it's imported by something called "Premium Imports Ltd." Ringing any bells? No? How about the fact that PI is located in <i>Bardstown, Kentucky</i>?? You know about Bardstown, don't you? ...It's the place where certain a famous and rather huge distillery is housed?? Yup: the bunch selling Harlequin can be none other than our pals at <a href=http://www.heaven-hill.com/brands.html>Heaven Hill</a>. They claim that it's "produced in France from a rich blend of the finest aged cognac and Mediterranean oranges renowned for their distinctive flavor" - and this is literally the only information I can find on the stuff. I can only presume it's sold to HH by the Illuminati or something.<br /><br />La Belle Orange is also fairly obscure, albeit far less so than the Harlequin. This time it's imported by White Rock in Lewiston, Maine, which sells quite a lot of things I've never seen nor heard of. Still no telling who in France ultimately makes LBO, but at least the importers actually bothered to put up a <a href=http://www.whiterockdistilleries.com/our_brands/cordials_and_liqueurs.php?product=18>section on their website</a> for it this time. The bottle design itself is, overall, probably my favorite of all the liqueurs save the (much more expensive) Grand Marnier. LBO doesn't bother with a fake wax seal or a ribbon (unlike Gran Gala or Harlequin), but it's more appealing than the similarly humble Torres: just a big orange LB badge and a label on nice paper. On the other hand, it's the only thing here with a screw-off top, but I can't hold that against it too much. La Belle Orange claims to be a "marriage of sun ripened oranges and the finest cognac," and a "harmonious blend" of "rich fruity aromas and elegant cognac flavors." Hmm. Well, we shall see.<br /><br />Tuaca is the odd duck here, especially among these two. Where they're more or less French attempts at a cheaper Grand Marnier, this (like the Gran Gala) is Italian. Second, at 35% ABV, it's significantly less strong than the other 80-proof bruisers I've got here. Third, and most importantly, it's <i>not</i> just orange we're dealing with this time. Rather, Tuaca is a brandy "artfully blended with hints of vanilla and orange flavors." The addition of vanilla already promises to make this more bizarre than my previous favorite, the Gran Torres, so I've got high hopes for this stuff. Also like the Torres, it claims to date back an absurd amount of time - like, 16th century absurd. Wikipedia, which is always right, claims that Lorenzo de Medici quaffed this stuff. That's pretty cool, and will (if nothing else) make a fine story for parties. Anyways, <a href=http://www.argonautliquor.com/images/bn/160/28344.jpg>the bottle itself</a> is classy but rather uneventful; it just looks like a generic brandy or something.<br /><br />All right, enough cockteasing: I've now poured all three liqueurs into individual glasses for comparison, along with (smaller) samples of the original three liqueurs. First, there's the colors. Of the newcomers, Harlequin is definitely the lightest of the bunch, roughly on a par with Torres; both are a kind of gentle champagne color. The LBO is darker still, perhaps just a touch darker than the Grand Marnier. The real champion here, though, is the Tuaca, which is a thick rich gold even darker than the Gran Gala from last time.<br /><br />Then there's the aromas. The most notable thing about Harlequin's smell is that it's a <i>dead ringer</i> for Grand Marnier. If you really try you can detect some subtle differences - the Harlequin comes across as slightly rougher, slightly hotter - but if I didn't have these two side by side I'd be completely fooled. Harlequin pulls off the cognac orange juice aroma thing almost perfectly; think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a dirty t-shirt. La Belle Orange, again, smells most like the Marnier. It's not quite as good a copy as the Harlequin, but I think I might actually prefer it over both. If anything, though, it comes off as even sweeter and smoother, and maybe even a little lighter; you can think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a schoolgirl uniform. The Tuaca, as expected, is totally unlike all of these other liqueurs. The aroma is - I don't know if I love it or hate it, to be honest. It's unique, to say the least. The nose is extremely <i>rum-like</i>; there's no hints of brandy in here at all, just a lot of wood, cola, maybe some orange at the edges, and above all, vanilla. And, despite the (relatively) low proof, this actually comes across as hotter than the others as well, about on par with the Gran Gala's heat. It's odd.<br /><br />Now, though, we get into the stuff that matters: the tasting. Down the hatch. (Again.)<br /><br />The Harlequin, true to its aroma, once again comes off as a cheaper, rougher twin brother to the Marnier. There's some sweet-and-sourness right up front, which then evolves into a very sweet (but hot) orange flavor that, well, doesn't really change. I get another splash of heat at the swallow, but that's really the most interesting thing it does. Like the Marnier, it's slightly cloying. Actually, it's just like the Marnier in almost all things, just less well-sorted about it. If GM were an XO version of a brandy, I would take Harlequin to be the VS. It's rougher, and it's weaker. Now, it's not bad - especially at $18 - but a copy is all it is, and a copy that's slightly worse than the original at everything.<br /><br />Wow. If I thought Grand Marnier was sweet, La Belle is off the fucking charts. This stuff is <i>really</i> sweet: it's as if they took the sweet n low taste of Marnier and turned it up to eleven. It's so sweet, in fact, that I find it genuinely difficult to drink neat; I feel like it's going to throw me into a seizure or something. Right up front there's a familiar clovey bite, which then evolves into what can only be described as Mega-Marnier. It's sweet orange squared. It gets a little sour at the swallow, but that's the only real relief one gets. Not only that, but it's smoother and there's even less of a burn. Everything I liked (and hated) about Marnier is here, severely amplified. Sipped neat it's like being tackled by a linebacker smothered in sugar. That isn't to say it's bad - it isn't. But next time it's getting a few drops of water. <br /><br />The Tuaca tastes more conventional (in many ways) than I was expecting from its aroma. It has a very minimal, very toned back orange taste remotely reminiscent of the Gran Gala, but then <i>over</i> that there's a strong current of vanilla. From the initial moments all the way up until the conclusion of the flavor development, it really does come across as a <i>spiced rum</i> of some kind. Only at the end do the flavors separate themselves, so you can tell it's a Marnieresque liqueur with a lot of vanilla rather than some kind of especially vanilla-y Sailor Jerry's. There's a little bit of a burn going down, but nothing like what I got from the nose. Here's the weird thing, though: the vanilla flavor makes it pretty heavy, but Tuaca's actually pretty pleasant to sip on its own (moreso than the other two newbies, anyways). I can't down it with anywhere near the speed of Torres, say - it's more of a savor-a-half-ounce-over-twenty-minutes kind of drink - but it definitely has an appeal. I have absolutely no clue how this'll do in a sidecar, but it definitely strikes me as something that mixing geeks would enjoy playing with.<br /><br />Speaking of sidecars, I guess it's time to see what's what in the mixing realm. To repeat, I'll be making bourbon sidecars. I'll be using a a bourbon to liqueur to lemon juice ratio of 2:2:1 - that should be leaning towards the sweet side for a sidecar, but frankly I want some sweetness to shine through here. For this test I'll be using my go-to budget bourbon, the lovely (if somewhat rowdy) Evan Williams 1783, which I've been using to make sours as of late. The newbies go first, starting with the Harlequin.<br /><br />Despite the already-low amount of lemon juice, the Harlecar comes out on the sour side of things. So far as I can tell, the Harlequin just folds: aside from a rather dull sweetness, it doesn't assert itself at all here. The sugar is there for the beginning of the sip and most of the middle, but by the end it goes very sour indeed. No real orange flavors are detectable, either. I found this sidecar rather lame, though it's by no means something I would turn down. All the liqueur is doing is providing a sweetener, and there are other things that do that job much better.<br /><br />The Bellecar is next, and I was expecting the LBO to just give me another toothache with its sweetness. Instead this sugar-happy little liqueur surprises me: it's sweeter than the Harlequin, yes, but along with the sweetness comes a much more pronounced orange flavor and an unexpected amount of nuance. There's a kind of lemon candy opening to it, and then the orange juice tang cuts in at the end to deliver a very novel, almost bitter (but still sweet) blood orange twist. It's extremely nice, and I prefer this Bellecar to the Harlecar by leagues. Some will probably find it too sweet for a sidecar - I'm tempted to add more lemon to this next time I make it, and there <i>will</i> be a next time - but even with this version I find it delicious and refreshing. <br /><br />And third comes the Tuacar, which is the real dice roll. Will it work? Will it be horrible? Well, it smells pretty awful. There's just a confusion of all sorts of flavors: first there's the vanilla and a bit of oak from the bourbon, and then a lot of lemon. Lemon and vanilla, just to tell you, are not good pals aroma-wise. In terms of taste, it's much the same story. The relatively subtle flavors of the Tuaca are completely covered over here, leaving only a messy and nearly-unrelieved lemon rush. Only in the aftertaste, when I start to breathe out vanilla, do I recall that I've actually been drinking a fairly nifty liqueur. As a drink, then, the Tuacar is a failure. It's the clear loser among these three, although this is reall an unfair test - a sidecar is just not the right drink for this stuff. I have some ideas about what <i>would</i> be, but that lies outside the scope of this test. (Since it's very rumlike, for example, could one use it <I>like</i> a rum? How about mixing it with cola?)<br /><br />Now then, on to mixing the three from the previous test. The Marnicar is a really pleasant surprise, considering Marnier's rather lackluster showing last time. The first thing I notice is a really lovely aroma which is rather difficult to describe. Brandy suspended in a cloud of orange pulp, maybe. In terms of sweetness, it fits nicely in-between the Bellecar and the Harlecar - maybe leaning a little more on the side of the latter's subtlety. Sweetened lemonade is the first impression, but as it moves back the orange pulp starts to poke itself through so that by the swallow it's totally dominating the other flavors. It doesn't quite have the sharp fruity jab at the end like the Bellecar, but in exchange it's a little more laid back and balanced. I think I slightly - slightly - prefer the Bellecar, but which one I would choose would really depend on my mood. In any case, the Marnicar is a fine damn drink. It's reserved without being boring, it does a fine job whetting the appetite without being overly tart - it's the perfect apéritif.<br /><br />Oh crap, it's the Galacar. Honestly, the more I've quaffed the Gran Gala, the less I've liked the stuff. When I initially started doing the taste test way back in November, I actually preferred its sour firey Italian personality over the rather boring Marnier. But, like hanging with a really rowdy friend, the charm ran out after awhile. Truth be told, Gala's just too damn harsh to enjoy on its own. On the other hand, it does still shine as a <i>mixer</i>, and it makes a fine showing here. The sour-orange-on-fire aroma is here right from the start, right out front, and that's not something I much care for. What I do like, on the other hand, is the taste. The lemon might as well not even be here - it's totally overpowered by the Gala, which immediately pushes its way to the front with (happily subdued) tangy orange tastes. It's surprisingly sweet, too, almost up there with the Bellecar, but the Galacar's finish is much more sour than the Bellecar's bittersweet blood orange. Again, it's tough to say which is best: factor in the aroma and I'd give it to the Belle by a nose, but for pure taste I honestly think that Gala might produce the best drink here. <br /><br />Finally there's the Torrecar. It is, as I was expecting, a letdown. The aroma is wonderful, of course - it's got all the deep orange zestiness that I love about the stuff - but the taste just doesn't bear it out. Torres, as a sippin' liqueur, is all about little nuances and subtleties. Forced to provide the sweetener role in a classic cocktail, though - well, it does the job, but it loses everything that makes it special. All I get up front, again, is sweet lemon, which blossoms out slightly as it moves back but doesn't really do much. In a lot of ways this comes across like a better smelling, slightly sweeter, slightly tastier version of the Harlequin, and that's not quite good enough in this company. I love Torres with a burning passion, but none of what I like about it is here in this drink. Frankly, the Torrecar is a waste of the stuff.<br /><br />And that's it - six liqueurs, six cocktails, and we're done. So, which is the best?<br /><br />Well, as before, I think it finally depends on what you're using it for. The Gran Gala, if you can ignore the force of its aroma, remains the best mixer, followed by La Belle Orange and (maybe) the Grand Marnier. The Torres may be a mediocre mixer, but for my money it destroys everything else for sheer sipping joy (the bizarre Tuaca comes in at a very distant second). LBO and the Marnier are probably the best all-rounders. And Tuaca, well, that's something for the cocktail scientists among us. And, while we may not have a clear winner, we at least have a clear <i>loser</i> in the Harlequin. Harlequin isn't horrible, it's just weak and comparatively rough, and there's very little it does that the others can't do better. Its only significant plus is that it mimics the classic Grand Marnier flavor and aroma better than anything else here. If you're a cheapskate, you could presumably use it to fake out your foodie friends.<br /><br />And that leads the final point to be made: Grand Marnier is pretty good, but it's fuckin' <i>expensive</i>. Even the Harlequin, as weak as it is, is (I think) a better value for the money than Grand Marnier. And if that's the case even for the worst stuff here, it's doubly true for everything else. So, then, let the conclusions stand thusly: Harlequin is the clear loser, Grand Marnier is overpriced, and for everything else, go by your own needs and preferences.<br /><br /><b>Grand Marnier</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Smooth, sweet. It's good stuff, neither too strong nor too laid back, and it's relaxing to sip (if a little one-dimensional). And it works well in a drink, used properly. But at $32 a pop, it isn't really worth it.<br /><br /><b>Gran Gala</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: Vile but interesting. The aroma's way too pungent and it's hard to sip neat, but it mixes like a champ.<br /><br /><b>Gran Torres</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A<br /><b>Summary</b>: Smells and sips the best of anything here. Incredibly nuanced stuff on its own. But if it's a mixer you want, well, subtlety isn't really the way to go.<br /><br /><b>Harlequin</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B-<br /><b>Summary</b>: It's a cheap knockoff of Grand Marnier. Period. Pour it into an old GM bottle and pretend not to be the shallow cheapskate that you are. I won't tell if you don't.<br /><br /><b>La Belle Orange</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: A-<br /><b>Summary</b>: Grand Marnier Xtreme. Even smoother and sweeter, and that can be good or bad depending on taste. It does cost about 40% less, though, and that's a lot.<br /><br /><b>Tuaca</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: Odd, vanilla-y orange liqueur. Nice enough for sipping neat (slowly), but I suspect its real brilliance lies in finding the right cocktails for it.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-90080888438127517082010-01-11T20:38:00.002-06:002010-01-11T20:42:30.152-06:00Vacation Roundup: Asheville Ninja Porter, Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout, and Pisgah PorterI watched Stalker (aka CTANKEP) for the first time a couple of months ago. I loved it. I could go into some specifics about what makes it so amazing, but suffice it to say it's just a brilliant, beautiful movie; it somehow manages to be thought-provoking without shoving things down one's throat. It's a great movie, and a thoroughly unique one.<br /><br />Thing is, though, I wouldn't watch it every day. Hell, I wouldn't watch it every month.<br /><br />This in itself seems to be enough to make questionable certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions; I am thinking in particular of Whitehead and process philosophy more generally. This position is generally not taken very seriously anymore, nor even particularly well understood, and I shall not try to describe it generally. One key feature to all metaphysical positions of this sort (broadly speaking), is that the work of "becoming" has to have an <i>aim</i> of some sort. Every entity, in the short moment of its <i>being</i> an entity, makes a 'decision' (in a very broad sense of the term) based on the various prevailing possibilities available to it. The thought goes that this 'decision' cannot be made at random, but must have some kind of telos. Whitehead says, for example, that "'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty" - by which he means, to grossly simplify, that the the cosmos as a whole, in all its diversity, must have an increase of <i>novelty</i> as its final aim. The 'decisions' of all entities, although never perfect, gravitate towards the novel. This must be as true of us as of anything else. Becoming, as such, is <i>aesthetical</i>. But why, then, should I prefer to watch something worse - Con Air, maybe - over Stalker? Surely I would say that Stalker is not only a finer film, but a more novel one. But I could watch Nicholas Cage sidekick dudes with a mullet all day, whereas Stalker is more of a once-a-year kind of thing. I spend hours watching dumb clips on Youtube, when a priori at least I should be watching City of God or something.<br /><br />Now, in all fairness, I'm sure a sufficiently clever process thinker may find some way to explain away these particular examples as perfectly consistent with their position, but there's a more fundamental point that (it seems to me) still stands. Process philosophy attempts to understand every entity, every little scrap of being, as an instance of production, working, making, poiesis - in a cosmos where we ourselves are not always "at work." Hell, we aren't always even comfortable working. On the contrary, human beings have an orientation towards <i>leisure</i> which is at least as fundamental. I won't tease out any further what that means, at least not today, but it seems to me important to take note of. After all, as I never tire of pointing out, leisure is the first condition for philosophy.<br /><br />With that in mind, then, I'd like to try out a trio of leisurely beers - two porters and a stout. These beers are all sold in deuce-deuce bottles, cost roughly the same, and are all made somewhere around Asheville. Seems like prime material for a roundup.<br /><br />The first beer is the Ninja Porter from the <a href=http://www.ashevillebrewing.com/>Asheville Brewing Company</a>. It's, well, a big bottle with a friggin' ninja on the label. It's dopey, but it's not like they were going for anything else. Maybe they were wise to do this. Really: if you passed a beer with a ninja on the label in your local shop, could <i>you</i> pass it up?<br /><br />Out of the bottle it pours almost completely black, with just a trace of ruby at the sides if held up to a light. Not much of a head on this one either: I get a half-finger at first, which quickly dies down into a coppery froth. It does smell pretty damn good, though: milk chocolate right out front, flanked by some roasted malts and just enough fruitiness to keep things interesting. Further down in the back I also get raisins and a little bit of banana bread. No trace of hops, really, just a thick dollop of dark malty goodness.<br /><br />I can report, verbatim, that my first words upon sipping this porter were "ooh, that's kind of nice." In a lot of ways this reminds me of the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/12/bell-thon-bells-rye-stout-special.html>Bell's Special Double Cream Stout</a> I had a few weeks ago (which was, I note again, neither creamy nor very special), except it's lighter, slightly more interesting, and a heck of a lot easier to drink. The cacao flavors from the roasted malt are dominant, but they're relieved by some honey, raisin nut bread, and sweet chocolate tastes. The word of the day here is "balanced." The taste up front features a mild coffee sting - no sweetness at all. Towards the middle the bitter coffee/cacao flavors remain in command, but at the same moment they're contested by a sugary-but-burntastic counterpart - almost a cola flavor, if you wish. By the end the cola develops into a molasses-and-chocolate kinda thing, which closes out on equal footing with the roasted malts (united in harmony to keep out the hops). The aftertaste is a bit cloying, really - imagine you've just had a not-so-great cup of sweetened black tea - but doesn't detract much from the rest of the beer. In terms of texture, it's about average for a porter. That is to say, those of us weaning ourselves off of Miller High Life are going to think they're drinking a loaf of sourdough, and those of us coming from a couple of imperial stouts are going to find it pleasantly light.<br /><br />Me, I'm in the "pleasantly light" camp. I find this beer to be, as it were, not "exciting" or "interesting" (it isn't - if you've been around your English ales long enough, you know these flavors) so much as "refreshing." If I'd just crawled into the Asheville Brewing restaurant after a day climbing around the local mountains, this is the beer I'd want to have. It's not incredible - it's a bubble bath, if you like. It's just there to be kind of idly comforting. It's the When Harry Met Sally of beers, and it gets a B.<br /><br />Next up on the plate is the Hickory Stick Stout from the <a href=http://www.oldehickorybrewery.com/>Olde Hickory Brewery</a>. Hickory is a city a ways east of Asheville, down in the foothills. You can think of it as Asheville's more workmanlike, less trendy, significantly less hippy big brother. I like to imagine that when they get together for holidays and such, Hickory tries to tell boring stories about the other guys working at the plant and Asheville has to spend ten minutes explaining why stuffing cooked in Hickory's turkey is no longer vegetarian.<br /><br />Where was I? Oh, right. Anyways, the bottle has a reasonably pretty forest design on it.<br /><br />Like the Ninja it pours real, real dark, albeit not "totally black" (as the side of the bottle would have you believe). Again, no real head to speak of - I get a little bit of tan fizz for a moment, which then settles back down again to leave a thin film. Hmm. The aroma, likewise, is pretty subdued - lots of milk chocolate in there, cut through with some coffee. None of the fruitiness from the ninja porter, but there's definitely some hops in there this time. It's a very vague aroma, really - I don't know what I'm getting with this one. <br /><br />Well, now! This, too, produced an "Ooh, that's nice." The flavor development is very odd on this - it doesn't go at all how one would expect it to, but in a good way. It starts off with a tiny bit of a coffee tingle on the tongue, then develops a lovely hot cocoa kind of taste in the middle. Then, all of a sudden, WHAM. Roasted malts rush in like a flash flood, intermixed with a small measure of grapefruity west coast hops, all of it fusing with the already-established sweet malt flavors. It's rather as if your hot chocolate somehow got two shots of espresso and a lemon into it <i>as you were drinking</i> the stuff. The aftertaste is pretty dry, mainly carring over the roasted flavors. It's an unusual flavor line, then, but it grows on you quickly.<br /><br />The Ninja Porter may be more refreshing, but this is the better beer. It's more creative, it's got more going on; it's the sort of thing you can show off to your friends (trust me, they haven't tried this one before). Hell, it would even work pretty well as a holiday beer. Actually, in some ways this is the most festive brew I've had since my buying spree - and that's with a couple of Christmas ales and winter warmers under my belt.<br /><br />Unfortunately, however, it does not have a ninja on the label. No beer is perfect. But it gets a B+ anyways.<br /><br />Finally there's the last of our trio of Asheville area bombers, which is another porter. This one, the Pisgah Porter, is from the <a href=http://pisgahbrewing.com/>Pisgah Brewing Company</a> in Black Mountain, and it claims to be "Asheville's best selling beer." Hmm, I don't know about that, not as long as the big boys with their crap lager are still around. On the other hand, this claim is in fact the most interesting thing on the label. The rest of it is pretty nondescript. You get a kind of light brown color on most of the label, and then right in the center there's the "Pisgah" name and a shot of a river running downhill amidst a forest. It's the sort of picture one expects to find on a blue-coded Magic: The Gathering card, really. I kind of prefer the Ninja's label. Anyways, moving on...<br /><br />Well, like the previous porter, this pours a nice dark ruby color (hold it up to a light and you can see hints of red at the sides). Also like the others, there's no real head here either - just a miserable half-finger that quickly disappears. The aroma is actually a bit stronger, although simpler as well: most of it, again, is chocolate milk, relieved by a little bit of earth and roastiness. No real hoppiness this time. That's really all there is to it in terms of character, but - again - it comes across as about twice as strong as the others. And now I taste it...<br /><br />...Wha-a-at?<br /><br />I don't want to think that I got a bad bottle somehow, but I can't imagine the beer is supposed to taste like this. If the Hickory stout takes a hard, powerslidy left turn halfway through the mouth, this one hits a tree. Hard. I mean, it starts off very nicely: there's coffee with cream and sugar on the front end, then a milky bittersweetness as it approaches the middle. And then it just kind of ends. The flavor falls off completely, leaving almost no aftertaste. It's not a dry finish or anything - <i>there is no finish</i>. You might be able to detect some slight sweetness and an odd, almost minty coolness, but that's it; it's like the beer just evaporates.<br /><br />I simply have no idea what's going on with this beer. The flavor development is the closest any brew has ever come to coitus interruptus. I guess I can say the body is medium to thin and that it might pair well with some barbecue or something. Because it is, and it would. But saying that is just to cover how mystified I am by a beer that somehow steals itself out of my mouth the moment I swallow it. Does anyone understand this? What is happening here? What the fuck is going on?<br /><br />I almost feel like I shouldn't grade this. I don't like it, but at the same time I can't get my brain around what they were doing here. If this is some kind of new self-cleaning beer, it's brilliant. If it's just an attempt at a decent porter, it's well short of the mark. I'll assume it's the latter.<br /><br /><b>Asheville Ninja Porter</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: It may have a ninja on the label, but inside it's a big teddy bear.<br /><br /><b>Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: A delicious and oddball surprise. Not quite world class, but different enough to chase down if you get a chance.<br /><br /><b>Pisgah Porter</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: D+<br /><b>Summary</b>: It's the Amazing Evaporating Porter!Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-84341109021818654752010-01-08T19:40:00.003-06:002010-01-08T20:10:00.723-06:00Micreview: Goose Island Christmas Ale (2009)The Christmas Ale is a Goose Island tradition, apparently. At heart it's a humble brown ale, to which the brewers add a slew of festive spices - "and with each year we change the recipe slightly so that you have something special to look forward to." This, then, is the 2009 vintage, something that's relevant for two reasons. First, this year Goose Island is giving some of their profits from this beer to the Chicago Christmas Ship (a local charity) - kudos to GI, then. Second, the bottle I'm drinking is a bit young, having only been brewed in October. Goose Island claims that the ale "develops in the bottle over 5 years" - which is a lot, considering the alcohol content is well south of what I typically think of as beers suited for storage (it's only a 5.7). Note that, seeing as this is a Christmas ale, they had to go and make the <a href=http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/christmas_ale/24.php>bottle design</a> just about the most garish thing Goose Island sells. The wreath and Santa hat really look rather silly set next to the deliberate simplicity, e.g., of GI's heritage collection.<br /><br />Anyways, that's enough post-holiday complaining, we have a beer to get to. This stuff pours a rather lovely amber color, with about a finger and a half of fizzy tan head. It's also quite thin-looking, but then again this is a brown ale - I'm not expecting chocolate sauce here. The aroma is the first real surprise: it actually comes off as <i>boozy</i>, which by all rights it shouldn't be. Aside from the very present alcohol, the main features are a mix of caramel and citrus (from the hops, I assume), undergirded by an odd earthiness and maybe a touch of yeast. It's not that great, really. More surprisingly, the spiciness I was expecting just isn't here at all.<br /><br />Thankfully, the taste comes off somewhat better. "Brown ale" isn't the first style to come to mind, though - this strikes me more as an amber than anything else (and yes, I more than anyone admit that these categories are open for debate, but still). There's a bit of a bittersweet nudge up front. Towards the middle the pale malts start to come in - there's a sort of biscuit character to it all, mixed with some fruitiness (apples, maybe). The hops from the aroma are there at the end, and they've got a quite noticeable grapefruity bite, but they're not nearly as strong as I expected. Only after I swallow do I begin to notice some spices: suspended over the maltiness from before I get nutmeg, cloves, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. Not an extraordinary aftertaste, but pleasant nevertheless. It's nice, it's festive, and it's by far the most interesting thing about this beer.<br /><br />If you absolutely must have a Christmas seasonal with a Santa Goose on the label, well, this brew ain't all that bad. Beyond that, I wouldn't bother with it. If the Goose Island brown you need for your festivities can do without the holiday label, then do yourself a favor and find some Naughty Goose.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: C+<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: A middling brown (actually amber) ale with a somewhat nifty holiday aftertaste.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-86084784366476543482010-01-04T02:53:00.002-06:002010-01-04T02:57:27.610-06:00Vacation Roundup: Clay Pipe Pursuit of Happiness and RJ Rockers Bell Ringer(I bought I <i>lot</i> of beer over my holiday vacation to the east coast, and I'll be slowly working through it all over the next few weeks. Here, then, is the first installment.)<br /><br />There are a lot of folks who don't make it into the thankless world of grad school (I'm not talking about the ones who get there and have the good sense to leave, mind, just the ones who don't make it in). A few - a lot fewer than you would think, really - don't have sufficient talent or training. That leaves the vast majority, who <i>are</i> good enough but by some arbitrary fiat don't make it in anyways. (And if you're reading this and thinking of going for this crazy thing, there is one thing to remember at all times: grad school is, at every moment that matters, a lottery. Or rather, it's a <i>series</i> of lotteries. And for each gamble you must throw more and more of your time and money, your sweat and your tears, into the pot. And you've got to nail every round to win the big prize, which isn't all that impressive anyways. And like any game of chance, you can do everything right and still lose.)<br /><br />Anyways, the point is: even if you're extremely qualified, there's no way to predict whether you will get in or not. If you're too sociable or not sociable enough, if you've been taking classes with too many people or with two few, if you ask too many questions or too few, if you've gone to the wrong school, if your program took in too many people the year before, if you end up on the wrong side of a territorial squabble - all of these things can be the end of a graduate career.<br /><br />But I'm not going to talk about those things. Instead, today I'm going to talk about those who (put positively) have wide interests, or who (put negatively) can't settle down on some particular issue or project.<br /><br />In the fourth chapter of <i>Being and Time</i> Heidegger (in)famously discusses social life. One finds there a rather unflattering portrayal of the human being, which - weirdly - much of contemporary Anglophone philosophy is beginning to take very seriously indeed (I think of Brandom, for example). People are described as <i>others</i>, and my relationship to them rests on a "being-with" (Mitsein) which is constitutive for the structure of my own existence - there is a certain sense in which I must "be with..." even if, objectively speaking, there is no other example of homo sapien around. Others are fundamentally co-existences (in the sense, for example, of "coworkers") with whom I interact in the various tasks I deal with from day to day. Their being, <i>as such</i>, consists in the fact that we are all in the same world together, chatting about stuff and working together (or, indeed, being in a state of conflict or mutual indifference), and in rare circumstances even doing philosophy. This means, among other things, that the philosophical problem of other minds - "how do I know that anyone else out there is a thinking being?" - is completely dissolved. It does involve biting a bullet, though: "In that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the others are encountered as what they are; they <i>are</i> what they do (betreiben)."<br /><br />"Betreiben" should be taken in the widest possible sense. What Heidegger is getting at is that we typically encounter others by way of their <i>roles</i> - that one as a baker, that one as the cop who could be checking out my car, that one as "the man who wrote Waverly" (Russell). There is a certain replaceability to others as we encounter them in everyday circumstances: I do not care who my waitress is so long as she is good at her job, I do not care which cab I take so long as I get where I need to go. The primary importance lies with the <i>doing</i>, not (as it were) the subject of the doing - which can basically be divided out of the equation. This can be extended even to roles that we would want to consider necessary - e.g., to someone's being the child of so-and-so (Kripke). And, for the most part, we even think of ourselves in this way as well.<br /><br />There is something rather grim about this picture, and it has been criticized - with some justice - by many. It cannot make much sense of love or ethical comportment, for a start. I am willing to grant those moments a great deal of weight, but for the <i>vast majority</i> of situations I think Heidegger must be right. The first half of <i>Being and Time</i> has yet to be topped as a description of how we are, initially and most of the time, and nowhere is that fact more sobering than in that chapter.<br /><br />I now return to my original topic, and deploy this insight in a bit of practical philosophy.<br /><br />Let us say that you are an extremely bright young scholar of religious studies. You began by working on Native American practices, and to some extent you still do, but then you began to expand to other areas - say, more on the theoretical side of things (Marx or whatever). And after taking an extra class or two, you begin to get interested in the classical world too - particularly Herodotus. And also in contemporary debates about medical ethics. And then there's your long-running fascination with German romanticism. And somehow you tie all all of this together into your application. Even if you've done everything with style and clarity, here is the problem: if the powers that be are going to intelligently decide on whether or not to let you into their clubhouse, they have to know <i>who you are</i>. And if Heidegger is right, that means they have to know <i>what you do</i>. They need some quick way to call you to mind, e.g., That Guy Who's Working on Late Plato. If you're all over the place, if you never really commit, they probably won't be able to remember you.<br /><br />And that brings me to the beers I'd like to talk about. They're not bad by any stretch, but they are both curiously <i>neutral</i>. They try to do a lot of things, but don't bear down on any of them. And that means that, while they're not bad, they're also not anything I'm going to try a second time.<br /><br />The first is Pursuit of Happiness, a winter warmer from Clay Pipe Brewing in Westminster Maryland - a brewery I've never tried before. Heck, aside from Flying Dog this is the first Maryland beer I've ever had. It's rather strong for the style - 8.25% ABV, which is enough to put some holiday cheer into anyone's vacation. The bottle, decked out in blue and red, is festive but (I would say) rather generic.<br /><br />Well, the pour isn't what I expected at all. Instead of the dark ruby I tend to associate with this style, there's an almost neon orange tinge to it - not to mention a huge, HUGE head. There's easily four to five fingers' worth of orange-flaked white, and this is after pouring less than half the bottle. It's persistent and sticky stuff, too: the inside of my glass looks like it's been attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. If only all beers this strong had such a head. And then there's the aroma, which is another pleasant surprise. Rather than festive spices, it's actually mostly hops, and leaning hard towards the citrus end of the scale at that. There's some yeast and a caramel malt aroma, but lemony hops is the star here. Here's some holiday cheer for you: it smells like a West Coast IPA, albeit a fairly laid-back one.<br /><br />Well, that isn't what I expected either. It's <i>light</i> and not really in a good way. After the aroma I was expecting it to coat my mouth with lovely hop burning, and it's doing that <i>some</i> - just not to the degree I was looking for. That massive alcohol content doesn't come through at all, but I kind of wish it would: this is watery, to be honest. As for the taste specific, it starts off up front with a lite version of your standard hoppy IPA tingle. The malts come in right afterwards, all earthy and warm like an Autumn bonfire (with a bit of honey there to provide relief). It finishes dry, with the citrus hops coming in and then fading away to leave an extremely long bitter bite of an aftertaste.<br /><br />It's a decent brew - I'd have it if I wanted something with a little force, but not quite up there at India pale levels. Nevertheless, I'm struck with the sense that it's not quite what it wants to be. It needs a thicker mouthfeel, certainly, but there's more to it than that. The tastes here are all over the place, with nothing much to unify them. They're just sort of <i>there</i>, one right after another. Hops! Malt! Now more hops!! Now some bitterness!! I have the sense that if they pushed this beer more in just one of the directions in which it's trying to go - if they <i>committed</i> to something - then they'd have a real winner. As it is, it's worth drinking (and it's a pleasant surprise in many ways), but it'll never be one of the greats.<br /><br />Next up is Bell Ringer, an "Imperial ESB" from RJ Rockers Brewing in Spartanburg, South Carolina - another new company to me. And it's appropriate, too, since I've never had an "Imperial ESB" before. I suppose I should expect a normal Bitter on meth, then.<br /><br />First of all, I have to mention the bottle. It's a real beauty. I once said about the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-reviews-goose-island.html>Goose Island Oatmealer</a> that it was the only beer that came in a tux, and I'm now going to have to take it back. Bell Ringer's bottle comes with a fantastic grey and white on black design that I absolutely love, in a sort of '50s diner logo sort of way. It's classy.<br /><br />The beer itself pours a very dark rusty orange color, with a tiny half-finger head. Unlike the Clay Pipe, there's no surprise there: this is 8.5% ABV, and the lack of carbonation shows. The aroma is quite subdued; it's mostly malts (pale, especially), and caramel and honey are the central notes. On the other hand, it opens up quite a bit with a bit of agitation. Give it a shake and you get a lot more fruitiness, especially orange, and a bit of hops tingle.<br /><br />The taste, as expected, is quite malty - once again, think of an IPA with about a tenth of the hop bite and you'll be close. It's a very well-balanced maltiness, never leaning too far towards sugar or bitterness. It begins sweet on the tongue, then gains a nice toasted flavor as it moves back. By the finish the toasted note takes over completely, with some orangey hops briefly stopping by to say hello. The aftertaste carries over the toasted flavor, and also comes across as strangely herbal - as if I'd just been chewing on some parsley. It's odd, but it grows on you. Like the Clay Pipe, this too is a bit watery. Unlike the Clay Pipe, you can tell right from the get-go that you're getting a boozy damn beer - that, at least, distinguishes itself right away.<br /><br />So once again, it's a decent beer - there's nothing really wrong with it beyond merely what I can nitpick, but there's also nothing all that special or memorable. It's not a massive spectacle of tastes like a beer of this strength should be. That would be okay if it could be used as a workhorse, an everyday sipper, but it can't. As a session beer, it's just too lively. If this beer were a car, it'd be a Pontiac G8. It's a fine creation, almost perfect for what it is really, and it's great value for money - but no one will ever really want one. Somehow it lacks the sparkle that would make me love it, or even remember it.<br /><br />I suspect that after I'm finished posting this review I shall forget about these beers altogether. And there's a certain injustice in that: they aren't bad, after all, just a little wishy-washy. I suppose, then, to remember a beer, one needs a "hook" of sorts. It needs a role; it has to do something, identifiably so. And these brews aren't quite there.<br /><br /><b>Clay Pipe Pursuit of Happiness</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: Think of it less as a winter warmer and more as a stronger-than-average pale ale. Less nutmeg, more cascade.<br /><br /><b>RJ Rockers Bell Ringer</b><br /><b>Grade</b>: B<br /><b>Summary</b>: Near-perfect boozy balance.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-2980693628089856122009-12-30T20:57:00.004-06:002009-12-30T21:02:10.862-06:00Micreview: Mendocino Imperial IPA (Winter Seasonal)Since I've got quite a long backlog of stuff (especially beer from my visit to Asheville) to get through, I thought I'd see how it felt to do a shorter, more "traditional" review every once in awhile. This beer seems ideal to try out something like this, since it's not all that special tastewise (there's something else that's interesting about it, though...).<br /><br />So - it's the Mendocino folks again. I pointed out why I loved these guys in my review of their <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-mendocino-black-hawk.html>stout</a>: if you buy Mendocino, you get <i>value</i> and you get <i>bottle conditioning</i>. The first is the main thing, and you can think of the extra yeastiness as a bonus they throw in. The Binnys folks have unfortunately bumped the price on Mendocino sixers up to, um, $6.99, which just means you're getting a <i>really good</i> deal for the money rather than an astonishing one. Today I'll be dealing with Mendocino's Imperial India Pale Ale, which I found looking very solitary in in a dark lonely corner of Binnys behind a bunch of Christmas ales. It's a good beer. But that's not the really interesting thing. The interesting thing is that right now you can buy it for $5.99.<br /><br />I repeat, it costs $5.99. For a <i>six pack</i>. Even <a href=http://www.binnys.com/blogs/post.cfm/the-best-beer-bargain-in-the-store>Binnys themselves</a> admit that this is the best friggin' deal in their store. It's astonishingly cheap - stupidly cheap. I repeat: A SIX PACK COSTS SIX BUCKS. Fuck, a sixer of Miller Lites will cost you fifty cents more, and this is a 7.5% alcohol slobberknocker of an IPA (rather than a shitty lager). Why hasn't everyone in Chicago migrated to this stuff yet? Who the fuck is still buying Budweiser? Do they even know what their seven dollars will buy them nowadays? (Mind you, I'm not being an elitist here, I'm just saying: why would you spend even more money on something <i>worse</i>?)<br /><br />Ah, well, I suppose I'd better get to the review.<br /><br />The brew pours a very pretty carrot orange, with a half-finger of fizzy, bubbly white head. The nose is - well, hell, I don't even need to stick my head in to check it, I can smell the citrus assault from halfway across my desk. Coming in for a closer whiff, the strongest elements are (surprise!) the hops, like a grapefruit that's gone mad and dressed itself in pine needles. Way, way in the back there's Mendocino's trademark yeast aroma, but it's more or less an afterthought here. It's not the most complex aroma in the world, but it's surely got me salivating<br /><br />Hrm, well, it's a good IPA. It's not great, and I'm not sure I would call it an "imperial" - at any rate it's nowhere near the kick in the dick that Dogfish Head's 90-minuter is - but it's quite solid, just a nice, hoppy, somewhat-bolder-than-average India Pale. Up front I immediately get a sharp piney bitterness. The sweetness of the malt and a bit of yeast come in from there to take over for a moment, but it's all for naught once the spicy citrus bite clamps down on the party at the end. This all closes out into a very dry aftertaste, which is - typical of the style - nice and puckery. Mainly I get hops, although you can still sense the sweet malt - or what remains of it at least, after having been run down by a pine tree in a pickup. The beer's even relatively smooth, with the body kept fairly light and the alcohol as well-masked as it can be for this style (but don't kid yourself, you're not going to be drinking this one quickly).<br /><br />Like seemingly everything Mendocino makes, this beer ain't one of the greats, but it can hold its own against the standards of the style and come out looking pretty good. As an IPA, I'd rate it as slightly above the Sierra Nevada and Goose Island IPAs, slightly below the Stone IPA and DFH 60-minuter (and well below the 90-minuter), and about on a par with Great Lakes' Commodore Perry. And that's pretty damn good company for a beer you can buy for a buck a bottle. So, for those of you who live anywhere near Chicago, what the fuck are you waiting for? When even the friggin' store is wondering why they've priced something so low, there's absolutely no excuse for not trying some.<br /><br /><b>Grade</b>: B+<br /><b>Summary</b>: When the next-cheapest IPA is more expensive by two bucks - i.e., more expensive by a <i>third</i> - you don't really need to make it good. Mendocino did anyways.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-16657107387928352152009-12-21T17:31:00.003-06:002009-12-25T13:55:26.715-06:00Review: Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout and Kona Pipeline PorterI'd like to talk about a distinction between <i>enhancement</i> and <i>gussying-up</i>. Both of these things broadly amount to a sort of addition - you have one thing, and then you do something to it or put something else in it - but beyond that there remains a gap that makes all the difference.<br /><br />Put it this way. A few weeks ago ago I took it upon myself to make my own oven-baked breaded chicken fingers. It was a complete disaster: they were greasy, overcooked, tough, and even smelled kind of funky. Not content to simply throw the things away, I took it upon myself to try eating them with whatever condiments were available. I gussied them up, in other words. Nothing worked: adding barbecue sauce, for example, simply made them taste like really awful chicken fingers with barbecue sauce on them. Spicy mustard, honey, even an unbelievably delicious cranberry sauce I had invented around thanksgiving - all of this simply sat on top of the fingers without changing their whatness, their terrible essence, in any way.<br /><br />Now compare this situation to another, one which you might have heard of. Take some gin, i.e. some grain alcohol with a ton of juniper in it, and slosh it around with some herbally-infused wine and a lot of ice. Now strain out the ice and add an olive. It shouldn't be any good, should it? Gin, on its own, is fairly unenjoyable (it was made popular as a dirt-cheap alternative to beer for the British peasant, after all). Even vodka has a long, proud tradition of drinking on rocks or simply neat - not gin, though, not unless you're an alcoholic from the isles. So, in any case, we're not starting off with something particularly promising here. Nevertheless, add that herby wine in just the right proportions and drop in an olive and you've got something that isn't nearly as horrible as it should be. Indeed, you've got something spectacular: the dry martini. The gin, which on its own tastes like an evergreen tree mopping a floor, is mellowed and transformed by the vermouth. As a result you get something crisp and cold and sour and spicy. You get what is still one of the best aperitif cocktails in existence - just don't drink one right after eating, for god's sake, and not at all in amounts larger than two ounces or so (unless you feel like having dinner while nursing a sizable drunk). The dry martini, then, is an enhancement. The gin is transformed by what is done to it and added to it - not that it ceases to be gin, but it is gin in a certain sense sublated to a nobler status.<br /><br />I have here two beers: the Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout made by the Bluegrass Brewing Company, and the Pipeline Porter made by Kona out in Hawaii. Both of these are examples of brews that have had something done to them. Both are examples of addition in the broad sense. The thing is, one of these additions works, and the other doesn't. One of these beers is very good, and the other isn't. So which is which?<br /><br />The BBS is, as the name might imply, an imperial stout that's been aged in a bourbon barrel. I've had two examples of this style before: the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-walter-paytons.html>Walter Payton</a> attempt (which I liked) and the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-goose-island-bourbon.html>Goose Island</a> version (which is probably the best beer I've had all year). I'm expecting good things from this, in other words. According to the <a href=http://www.bluegrassbrew.com/bbstout.htm>website</a>, this stuff has been in the wood for 60 days - not very long at all compared to the others, but presumably still enough to suck up some bourbon character. More weirdly, it's only rated at 8% ABV. That's slightly low even by imperial stout standards, and <i>really</i> low for a barrel stout. Oh, well, at least it comes with an atttractive barrel-themed label (wood grains and all).<br /><br />Off goes the cap. It pours very black, but surprisingly it's not particularly thick - by appearance it just sort of looks like a middle-of-the-range stout, really, not the monster I've been expecting. Even more oddly, it's got a <i>head</i>. And a big one at that: I get three fingers' worth of tan bubbles from this stuff. I got nothing of the sort from the other two barrel stouts, and that probably says more about the BBC take's alcohol content than anything. The aroma is, well, subdued. Initially it's very much like the Payton and the Goose Island, except at about a tenth of the power. Underneath the sweet bourbon, oak, and vanilla smells, though, I detect more conventional stout flavors. It's kind of a dull coffee and cacao mixture, really. Hrmm.<br /><br />If the aroma is disappointing, though, that's nothing compared to the taste. First imagine a day-old pile of bonfire ashes; now imagine pouring a shot of Beam over it. There, you've now got a pretty good idea of what this beer tastes like. There's a little bit of bourbon in this, to be sure, but you only really get it at the end. The rest is just a kind of dull charred maltiness. Up front I get a slight bitter tingle, which then expands into that not-very-pleasant burned flavor. This mostly holds steady until the aftertaste, when the vanilla-y bourbon sweetness finally (<i>finally</i>) pierces its way through. Even then, though, the ash still dominates. The aftertaste is pretty much the most pleasant aspect of the beer, really, and it doesn't even last that long. I'll grant them this: it's probably an easier beer to drink than the Payton or the Goose Island. It's not as heavy nor as strong, but the price you pay is that it's quite boring and not very good to drink.<br /><br />What Bluegrass has here, then, is a questionable stout that's not very good to drink - I half suspect they took a flamethrower to the malt before they brewed it, although I can't confirm this - which they tried to fix by hosing it into a bourbon barrel for a couple of months. It hasn't really worked. Rather than turning a mediocre beer into a good one, they've just added a few new all-too-thin bourbony flavors to their mediocre beer. They've gussied it up, in other words. I suppose it's better than it might have been otherwise, but there's no getting around how ultimately disappointing this stuff is. C+, and that might be too generous.<br /><br />Now for the Kona porter, and I'll get to the most important thing right away: this is a coffee beer. I don't much care for this style - in fact, I think many of the more prominent examples (e.g., the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-founders-breakfast.html>Founders</a>) are overdone disasters in which all the flavors are drowned out by the weed from Ethiopia. So I'm biased against the Pipeline Porter from the beginning. And yet rather than a gigantic hideous baby, it's got a friendly baby blue surfing-themed design on its label. It looks friendly, it looks irreferent, it looks like something that one might actually want to drink...<br /><br />In fairly standard fashion, it pours a moderately viscous auburn - a little bit of light gets through this stuff, but not a whole lot. It has a lovely one and a half finger tan head, too, and that's nice. But what's nicer is the aroma, which is - not too put the point too carefully - the greatest smell I've ever had from a coffee beer. For once, the joe doesn't take over completely! Instead there's a melding and a partnership between it and a rich roasted malt aroma. I get chocolate milk, brown sugar, and fresh oatmeal at first, and only when I scent deeper does the coffee cut in - enhancing the aroma rather than taking it over. Like the BBS, there's no trace of hops (but who cares?).<br /><br />Honestly, the taste is a slight letdown after the smell. This time the coffee takes the lead - take a sip and its bitter edge hits the tongue right away. The notes of joe retain their dominance, on an increasingly shaky basis, all through the middle and the finish, where molasses notes start trying to pull it away (there's also a brief poke from the hops to remind you that you're drinking a porter, but they've clearly only got a bit part). Only a few moments after you swallow does the roasted malty sweetness really overcome its coffee rival, leaving a long and very pleasant aftertaste. Not as good as the aroma, then, but still very nice. Even the texture is about right for a porter - not too thick, not too watery.<br /><br />This, then, is how you make a coffee beer. I have no illusions about this being the end-all, be-all of the style, mind. I think it can be done better. But at the moment, the Pipeline Porter is the one to beat; this beer is the yardstick. What the Kona folks had was a very solid porter to begin with that they then <i>enhanced</i> with, of all things, a touch of joe. And, through some impossible warlockery, they didn't screw it up. That minor miracle is enough to make this beer special; the fact that it's probably one of the best winter beers around makes it even moreso.<br /><br /><b>Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout<br />Grade</b>: C+<br /><b>Summary</b>: Take a used bourbon barrel and light it on fire. Put some of the remaining ashes in a widemouth. Bingo.<br /><br /><b>Kona Pipeline Porter<br />Grade</b>: A-<br /><b>Summary</b>: It's the glaznost of coffee beers. Joe and malt flavors working together towards mutual interests, leading to global peace.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-90236054613720388582009-12-09T20:55:00.004-06:002010-04-03T17:32:17.030-05:00The Bell-a-thon: Bell's Rye Stout, Special Double Cream Stout, Expedition Stout, and Best Brown AleThis might be my last update for awhile, given that A) I'm going out of town for winter break tomorrow and B) I doubt my folks are going to give me much time to write about alcohol until I get back. But it should be a good one.<br /><br />So here's the deal. After much singles-buying and several people dropping off beer for Thanksgiving, I've now inexplicably got my hands on collection of four (4) different beers from Bell's Brewery. I didn't plan for this and I don't really know how this happened, (given that I don't typically buy Bell's), but here I am anyways. Funny enough, three of them are stouts as well (probably because Bell's has some crazy obsession with stouts - last I checked they sold about a dozen of the things during various parts of the year). All told, I've got me an Expedition Stout, a Special Double Cream Stout, a Rye Stout, and a Best Brown Ale. I'm hoping amazing things will happen, and dreading that they won't.<br /><br />You see, I like to think of Bell's as something like the Toyota of the microbrewing world. I do this for several reasons. First: they're fairly ubiquitous. Toyota is the largest car company in the world, and while Bell's isn't quite up to that level, the upper midwest is still nevertheless utterly saturated with them. If any store around here sells any microbeer at all, they're going to sell Bell's. Second: they're reliable. I've never had a Bell's that's actually been <i>bad</i>, which is to their credit. Third: most of what they make is pretty boring. As examples of this I'll cite their Porter, Lager, and Pale Ale, all of which I've had sometime in the past year. All three of these beers are quite competent, practically flawless, and deeply unexciting examples of their styles. I wasn't exactly let down, I just felt like I was drinking... a porter, a lager, and a pale ale. With nothing much remotely interesting about them. If I ever have any of those beers again, I might review them - but it'd be hard. I think I'd come up with something along the lines of: "Yeah. Pretty good."<br /><br />Those, then, are the three typical things. But there's one other thing about Toyota, and (indeed) about Bell's, that most people don't notice. And that's Point The Fourth: every once in awhile, when the mood is just right, they can and do go completely insane.<br /><br />I could cite several moments from Toyota's occasional dives into madness. The original Scion xB, for example, or the 2000gt, or the upcoming Lexus LFA (which will cost <i>three hundred and seventy-five thousand</i> dollars). But there's a much better example to be found. Way, way back in the glorious cocaine-and-Wham!-fuelled days of 1985, Toyota created something very special. Up until that year the company had mostly been making its name off of stuff like the Tercel and the Cressida - cars that never broke down, at the cost of being deeply dreary. And then it dropped <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrA-XIhDZR4>this thing</a> - the MR2. It was an instant masterpiece: a light, stripped-down, fingertippy, revvy, quite fast sporty coupe. Even better than that, it was (and still is) stunningly good-looking. In terms of its looks, the MR2 was like a Japanese Ferrari. No, not <i>was like</I>, but <i>was</i> a Japanese Ferrari, beating Honda's NSX to the trick by half a decade. Better still, just like the hardest of the hardcore roaring Italian monsters of its day it even had a rear mid-engine layout - i.e., the engine was mounted literally right behind the driver to achieve a perfect weight balance. The engine itself was quite small - only a 1.6 liter four-banger - but it revved like a mofo, could be supercharged for good measure, and - as one of the legendary Toyota A-engines - it lasted pretty much until Richard Pryor came along and shot it with a .357. And most importantly, the MR2 was <i>cheap</i>. All of this meant that any moderately successful 20-something could suddenly own himself a very reliable hardcore exotic sports car for about the same price as a four-door family cruiser. The MR2 was a stupendous achievement, and it was also voice-hearing, straightjacket-wearing, bug-eating nuts. I absolutely love it; it's my favorite Toyota ever, by miles.<br /><br />(For the purposes of being thorough: GM also built a mid-engined car at about the same time, the Fiero. Unfortunately it had a habit of catching on fire)<br /><br />Like Toyota's mad cars, Bell's has brewed some mad beers. I'll cite just one, which is (so far as I can tell) universally beloved: the Hopslam Ale. Unfortunately I can't speak from firsthand experience here; I tried to get my hands on one of these monsters to review, but by the time I realized it existed (uh, sometime this past summer) it had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The Hopslam, in essence, is a massive 10% ABV India Pale Ale. The very idea of such a thing is slightly insane, the fantasy of a dangerous and antisocial cascade addict, and it's certainly not the kind of brew you'd throw together in a weekend. Nevertheless, the folks at Bell's got together one day, seemingly lost their minds for awhile, and then went and made it. And that's wonderful.<br /><br />So, here's the deal with my four beers. I'm expecting at least half of these to be boring, frankly. The math demands it. But what I'm really hoping for is that at least one will demonstrate the madness that I know Bell's is capable of, and earn my undying love.<br /><br />So, let's get this going. First: the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout.<br /><br />Well, what exactly is so "special" about it, I wonder? It comes in a fairly unimpressive, winter-themed bottle with some buck-naked tree branches (call me a philistine, but I miss the cow a little). In terms of style, this is apparently a milk stout - roughly comparable, then, to the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-left-hand-milk-stout.html>Left Hand Milk Stout</a> I reviewed (and loved) last month. I'm expecting good things, and the initial impressions don't let me down. This stuff pours a beautiful dark russet color, with a one-finger off-white head. The aroma, unsurprisingly, reminds me a lot of the Left Hand - it's basically good, lactose-rich chocolate milk. It's not quite as strong a nose as the LHMS, especially when agitated, but in return there's a little more going on. I detect hints of caramel and butterscotch buried a ways behind the chocolate milk. There's a little tinge of hops as well.<br /><br />So I take my first sip, expecting the milky smoothness of the Left Hand, and... I don't get it. Astonishingly, this is actually thin. Very thin. It certainly doesn't have anything like the rich mouth-coating texture I was expecting, anyways. In terms of body this is essentially comparable to a porter, - and that's not necessarily bad <i>if you're selling yourself as a porter</i>, and not as a "Special Double Cream Stout." I've discovered, then, what the "special" means: they took the cream out.<br /><br />It's not all that great as far as taste goes, either; I get lots and lots of roasted malts, with little else. It's just a muddy cacao bitterness that occasionally (but not often) lets rays of sweetness shine though. The aftertaste starts out with a dry, bitter twang, but if you let it linger for a bit you'll get (funny enough) a kind of earthy fruitiness as well. Think of musty, chalky raisins and you'll be close. It's not particularly pleasant, sadly. On a side note, this also tastes hotter than the Left Hand - a fact confirmed by the 6.1% alcohol content (as compared to 5.2).<br /><br />I'm disappointed by this one in a big way; it's much drier than the Left Hand, which (again) would be fine if it were anything other than a "Special Double Cream Stout." I suppose the dryness and unrelenting cacao bitterness could suit some, but I find it to be nowhere near as much of a pleasure to sip. This, too, would be fine if the Bell's were cheaper than the LHMS (which, at $11 a sixer, is a bit dear) - but astonishingly, it actually costs <i>more</i>. And a <i>lot</i> more than Bell's regular beer. Bottom line, the Milk Stout is a supremely great sit-back-and-murder-two-hours beer. This, on the other hand, is more of a drink-while-chowing-on-gouda-and-a-barbeque-sandwich kind of beer. I don't mind such beers, of course, but I've got a ton of the latter to choose from and not a lot of the former. It's decent, where I was looking for great.<br /><br />So, onto the Bell's Best Brown, then. It's a brown ale that comes with an owl on the bottle's label. Hmm, well, I'm honestly not expecting much from this one.<br /><br />It's clearly not as thick as the stout as it pours (although it's not exactly a pilsner either). And it's not really "brown" per se - it's more like a darkish rusty color, with a foamy beige two finger head. The aroma's on the weak side for a brown; maltiness is the chief note, plus some grassiness, a touch of apple, and a slightly lemony hop tinge. It's rather pleasant, actually, like a nap in your backyard hammock.<br /><br />And now I sip the stuff, and I'm honestly shocked. This beer, spookily, comes off as <i>creamy</i> - like, really creamy. It's like the lactose that was supposed to go into the Double Cream stout went into this instead. Whatever's responsible, I like it. In the front I get a little bit of fruity sourness, but that's quickly dispatched with a big wave of creamy, caramelly, malty goodness mixed in with a nuttiness that's spot-on for the style. Once it reaches the back the hops cut through and (politely, reservedly, like nervous children asking questions at Sunday school) have their say. The aftertaste is mainly the aforementioned nuttiness, with a touch of the hoppy citrus suspended over it.<br /><br />It's very good, in that understated English brown sort of way. If you can think of brown ales on a spectrum ranging roughly from South Shore's Nut Brown (the most subdued) to Dogfish Head's Indian Brown (the most fierce), this is about 80% of the way towards the South Shore. There's enough hops around to remind you that you're, you know, drinking beer, but beyond that it holds back and just lets the texture and the earthy caramel speak for itself. Aside from the creaminess, then, this is a fairly standard (albeit particularly well-done) brown ale. And that's by no means a bad thing: an Indian Brown may be great for when you'd like to be wowed, but this, this stuff is comfort food. It's a big old Labrador coming to meet you at the door after a long day at work. It'd make a fantastic session beer, and frankly I like it a heck of a lot more than the Cream Stout (which is a neat trick, because it's two or four bucks cheaper for six).<br /><br />All right then, the Bell's Expedition Stout. This is a Russian imperial, folks, so it should go right for the jugular. And, importantly, I'm drinking this one very fresh - it's had no aging at all, and I've been told this is a brew that probably needs it. So I'm expecting things to be pretty lively.<br /><br />As expected, it pours a nice thick black, the usual dirty motor oil look. It also has a relatively large head - I get almost two fingers, and I didn't even pour the whole bottle. The aroma, again, is somewhat more subdued than I expected (the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-brooklyn-black.html>Brooklyn</a> beats the pants off this for sheer knockdown power). When I sniff deep, oddly enough the first thing I notice is a kind of rustiness from the hops. It's not great. Things open up a bit with some agitation, giving off some toffee scents and (perhaps) a little bit of coffee. I can't even detect much heat - surprising for something that's a whopping 10.5% alcohol. Even when agitated, though, this thing has a very subtle nose. Weird. Well, bottom's up.<br /><br />Wow, there we go. That knockdown power I was expecting in the nose? In the taste, it's there. This here is high-caliber shit; it's very strong and very rough. Some aging would probably mellow this right down, I think, but at the moment it's a teenaged street tough with a knife and a disregard for the health of others. Up front is a roasted bitterness with a sharp alcohol edge. Moving on back, I get cacao - lots and lots of very bitter cacao, with a touch of coffee in there as well. It's really mouth-coating, hair-raising stuff, too - this is a beer with a bad fuckin' attitude. Charcoaly hops hit like a FAE bomb at the end (destroying everything in your mouth that was left), and they carry right on through to the aftertaste (which, as is typical in imperials, lasts close to forever). Somewhere, Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing.<br /><br />I don't know quite how to grade this. It's an imperial stout - which means I'll love it however bad it is - but this one is very, very tough to drink. It's to Storm King what Mezcal is to Tequila; imagine someone handing some newly-brewed Old Rasputin a chainsaw and you'll be close. I'm rather charmed by its rough ways, to be honest, but don't expect to drink it quickly. Set aside some time for this one, folks.<br /><br />Last up is the Bell's Rye Stout. This is the one I've been saving a lot of hope for; I've never had a rye stout before, but given how much I love a good old fashioned (with Wild Turkey Rye or occasionally Old Overholt, if I'm feeling cheap) I've got high hopes that this'll be the great discovery of the night. The pale white gentleman on the bottle's label appears to have been killed by his, after all.<br /><br />A fairly typical stout pour, really - it's a fairly thick, dark auburn, with hints of a cream head. The smell, mainly, is a big wet sloppy kiss of roasted barley. I get mostly milk chocolate all the way through, with a subtle edge to it in the back - I can't tell if it's from the alcohol (6.7%) or something else. Hmm.<br /><br />The taste is - well. Hrm.<br /><br />The rye is definitely adding something, that's for sure, but it's not quite what I was expecting. It's rather difficult to describe. As a rough blueprint, think of a standard medium-bodied Irish stout. Got that in your head? The creamy texture, the dry finish? Okay, if you can, mentally remove the dry, gentle hoppiness and replace it with a kind of mouth-coating <i>bready</i> feel. Yes, bready, as if you're chewing a slice of pumpernickel or maybe eating a nice aged cheese. I was expecting spice and burn with this stout, Sazerac-style, but it's not like that at all - instead the general sense is just this nice, yeasty, wheaty, slightly bitter flavor. It's odd.<br /><br />All right, I should probably be more precise about the taste. Up front I get the creamy texture and a little bit of a tingle, but nothing out of the ordinary. There's still not much to talk about as it moves back, save a bit of bitterness (this stuff is smooth to a fault). By the end you get a bit of the roasted, milk chocolate flavor promised in the smell. It's only after you've swallowed that the yeasty, earthy, grainy bread taste shows up, and it lingers for awhile in tandem with the roasted sweetness. The alcohol isn't that strong (6.7%), but if you're paying attention you can tell it's there.<br /><br />I don't know what to think of this one. It's not a bad beer at all, it's just not what I was expecting. I was looking for a rye whiskey assault, and got a sandwich. Verdict: decent, not great. <br /><br />So that's it then. Four beers, and no real masterpiece among them. The SDC Stout was the biggest disappointment, as it just comes across like a mediocre porter. The Rye wasn't that amazing either. The Expedition Stout, while by far the most exciting beer here, was unweildy and not that much fun to drink. So the "winner," astonishingly, is the sleeper of the bunch - the Best Brown Ale. It is, as near as you could want, a perfect workhorse of a brown ale; sure, they could have gussied it up a little more if they'd wanted, but that would have lost the point of a simple brown ale. This beer is here to pamper you, to hand you your slippers and lie at your feet, and it does that flawlessly.<br /><br />And thus, I wade into the Bell's portfolio and pick out the most boring beer of the four as my favorite. Against my better judgment, against my own convictions. I feel slightly guilty about this, as if I'd just driven a bunch of Toyotas and the one I preferred was the Avalon. Nevertheless, the result stands. And really, as much as I love the MR2, maybe the Avalon's not such a bad option after all.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bell's Special Double Cream Stout</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B-<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: It's a cream stout without the cream. Yeah. Pretty good.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bell's Best Brown Ale</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B+<br />Summary: It's a fine example of a mild brown ale. Yeah. Very good.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bell's Expedition Stout</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: Charcoal ninjas declare war on your mouth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bell's Rye Stout</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: It's a really bready stout. Yeah. Pretty good.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-41625465911585859802009-12-07T14:34:00.003-06:002009-12-07T14:57:16.050-06:00Review: Flossmoor Station Pullman Brown AleI was in a class with Bruce Lincoln once, when the topic of the World Series came up. A few people in the class admitted to pulling for the Yankees over the Phillies. He wasn't so much outraged by this as confused; "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for capitalism," he said.<br /><br />I understand the sentiment, especially when I think about Goose Island. They make some fantastic - no, <i>phenomenal</i> beers, although most of my friends seem to completely ignore the good ones in favor of the fucking 312 Urban Wheat Ale. The thing is, Goose Island is huge and Goose Island is everywhere. In Chicago at least, every booze shop and every supermarket that sells beer carries some Goose Island or other. In a word, they're the Yankees of the Chicago brewery scene.<br /><br />And that's fine, right? I mean, they do make some good beers and all. Indeed, but as a lover of this stuff I really want to get <i>as much great beer as possible</i> to the shelves of my local store as possible, and the giant in the playground isn't always going to be the best guy to do this. The trouble is, what about the <i>other</i> breweries around chicao? Where the heck are they? Do they even <i>exist</i>? And if they do, do the stores carry them?<br /><br />If you look around you'll find a few here and there, but you can be forgiven for not noticing them. <a href=http://www.halfacrebeer.com/home.php>Half Acre</a>, up in Lakeview, sell a bitter (pretty good as I recall) and a lager (which I haven't tried) and a bunch of other stuff I haven't been able to locate. <a href=http://www.metrobrewing.com/main/index.html>Metropolitan</a>, who reside up near Evanston, sell a couple of lagers that I also haven't gotten around to yet. If you want to go farther out, you've got <a href=http://www.twobrosbrew.com/>Two Brothers</a> out near Naperville (who make, among other things, a nice comfy reclining chair of an imperial stout that I'll have to review at some point) and <a href=http://www.walterpaytonsroundhouse.com/content/28.html>America's Brewing Company</a> a few more miles down in Aurora (who make that stupid but fun <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-walter-paytons.html>bourbon barrel stout</a> I tried last month). And aside from a couple of brewpubs, err, I think that's about it...<br /><br />...Except, of course, for the company I'll be talking about here. <a href=http://www.flossmoorstation.com/>Flossmoor Station</a> is a restaurant slash brewpub in Flossmoor (as you might expect), located right next to the Metra stop. I'd heard of them, but I've still never been down there. One day, however, I happened to spot this guy in the fridge of my local Binny's - the Flossmoor Station Pullman Brown Ale, a deuce-deuce with a beautiful bottle (which I'd like to describe in a moment). It looked interesting and it was local. Well, why not?<br /><br />So, one thing to note right away is that this is a premium brown ale sold in a 22 oz bottle at around the $5-6 price range. And that immediately poses a problem. You see, that fact means it's competing directly with Naughty Goose, another brown brewed this time by - you guessed it - Goose Island. (Note that this is different from the GI Nut Brown Ale, which is more common, cheaper, and not nearly as good.) And Naughty Goose is probably my favorite brown ale ever. Compared to the Sam Smith's or the Dogfish Head it's not all that exciting, but there's such a purity and a faithfulness to the style and a skill to the approach that it just doesn't need all the extra nuance you get in those beers. Now, as you might expect, I'm not all that happy about the fact that GI makes - so far as I've had - the best brown ale. Loving something from Goose Island is, indeed, like loving capitalism. Thus, I do hope that the Flossmoor Pullman is better - beyond even my usual hopes that each beer I have be a little bit better than the one before. But the Naughty Goose is <i>really</i> good, so the Flossmoor folks have quite a battle in front of them.<br /><br />So: the bottle. Briefly described, it's fantastic. Just <a href=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7cF3J1hhcGYU1zPP42U013e4DhKOm865lUlsmWKs0vGtEaC96VQ0tScHxe4SK6T-_UIXYk-qsKlxf2iaujv3VbpWtiDfk39iCLn2-cobMLkZXshZfnH70kyh8hipSibo9qh1MEfLWjtQ/s1600-h/FS-PBA-3-08a.jpg>take a look at the thing</a> - those aren't labels you see, all that stuff has actually been painted onto the glass like an old-timey Coke bottle. The retro train-lookin' brewery logo, the exquisite design for the beer name, the various little "stamps" all around describing the beer - it just looks absolutely wonderful. I love the shit out of this bottle. If I gave out awards for best design, this would win this year's prize by a huge margin.<br /><br />Nevertheless, this isn't a blog about bottle design. It's a blog about booze. And that means we have to actually open the thing up and try it. And I'm honestly not sure what to expect from this beer. It's a brown ale, which are usually pretty boring, right? But then on the side it reads: "This rich, robust, chestnut-colored ale uses eight malts plus oats and a dollop of blackstrap molasses for a smooth, creamy taste and texture." Molasses? <i>oats?</i> In a brown ale? What the hell am I getting into here?<br /><br />So, the pour. Wow, this looks a heck of a lot darker than a normal brown - it's kind of a very dark auburn, rather than the usual coppery shade. Mind you, there's still a wee bit of light getting through, but not a whole lot. Newcastle on a drizzly day, then. There's not much of a head, either, which is <i>really</i> odd for the style - I only get about a half-finger of off-white foam, if that. If I were judging merely by its appearance, then, I'd suspect this of being a porter or even a stout long before I called it as a brown. The aroma, too, is very nice indeed, but it still doesn't make me think of a brown ale. There's tons of sweet roasted malts in there and some macademia nuts; the molasses comes through very strongly as well. I also detect a touch of hoppiness, although I suspect this beer's going to be very mild.<br /><br />Now to taste...<br /><br />...Okay, this is a stout. Or at least, very very close. That's not intended as a criticism - it's just a fact. It absolutely tastes like a stout. Apologies to my revolutionary comrades at Flossmoor, then, but that's what you've brewed here. The mouthfeel, for one thing, is incredibly smooth, creamy, and rich, with a medium body. I think it's the oats that're doing the most work in telling me this is a stout, really - this is very much like an oatmealer, although with quite a bit more character. The taste begins with a bit of coffee bitterness up front, and then expands into a thick mix of woody and sweet flavors. Towards the end I get a bit of an edge from the hops I smelled on the nose - not much, just a love nibble to let you know they're there. The aftertaste, to finish up, is very subdued, but mainly consists in the woodiness from before and a little twang left over from the hops.<br /><br />In fact, if there's any case at all to be made for this being a brown ale, I'd say it's in the character of the hops. They are far and away the most traditional brown ale elements here - everything else is sweet and creamy and stouty, but these hops could've come right out of Avery's Brown or Turbodog. And happily, they do exactly what what the hops in a brown ale should: they counterbalance the maltiness and the sweetness with some bitter earthy citrus. In this case I think they're overmatched, but the good old fashioned brown ale hops are definitely here. (And now that I notice it, this extra bite actually makes Pullman easier to drink than most oatmeal stouts. Funny, that.)<br /><br />So I'm torn by this stuff, really. <i>As a beer</i>, without any further determinations, this is excellent; just as good as Naughty Goose, and much more creative. But if I went to the shop looking for a really good <i>brown ale</i>, I wouldn't buy it. It's so far from that style that, were it not for my specifically looking for brown ale traits, I wouldn't have noticed them at all. So, give Pullman a B as a brown but an A+ for trailblazing (I'll split the difference and call it an A-). For Flossmoor has really created its own style here: it's a brown ale with stouty creaminess, an oatmeal stout pulled back to the earth by a good dose of rustic hops. Whatever you want to call it (an oatmeal brown, say), it's great beer. And when downing a bottle means striking a blow against the Yankees of the beer world, you've got all the reason you need to go out and find one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: A-<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: An English Brown and an Oatmeal Stout met at a bar and had a one-night stand. This is the mad, wonderful result.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-48820318560379276612009-12-03T20:18:00.002-06:002009-12-03T20:33:31.757-06:00Review: Maker's Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon WhiskyAs a self-identified student of philosophy, it's kind of my job to argue with people. And, around the campus, there's no shortage of folks to argue with. Hard sciences folks who can't really see why physicalism is a problem? Check. Aspiring "theory" types from literature departments? Check. Dedicated world-saving humanists critical of philosophy's frequent political neutrality? Check. Constructivist social scientists? Check. Theologians? Check. Hippies? Check. I like all of these people, and I like debating with them. Almost everyone I've met, when the topic of philosophy comes up (and it inevitably does when I mention what I work on), are willing to keep the open mind and attentiveness to die Sache selbst required of any real discussion. Honestly, I'm probably more of a stubborn stick in the mud in these debates than any of them.<br /><br />There's another kind of person, though, that I tend <i>not</i> to like. I don't much interact with them and I probably shouldn't condemn the whole lot with a broad stereotype, but (for the purposes of this review) I will anyways.<br /><br />On the far east side of the campus is my least favorite building in the entire neighborhood. It's the School of Business, and inside and out it looks like a bizarro Macy's (and obviously I have a problem with the Macy's part, not the bizarroness). When I'm forced to go inside, usually because someone I know would like to have lunch at the School's cafeteria, I can never quite shake the sense that I'm trespassing into a professional services ad. Polished, well-dressed people are everywhere, smiling, laughing, and shaking hands like a guy from Robert Half International is about to take their picture. It's a nightmare world of young professionals in collars, golf shirts, and dress skirts, tired and grizzly market researcher-looking types, and balding male betied professors reviewing drafts for their PowerPoint slides. I do not belong among these people. If the doctoral student working on philosophy has any natural enemies, then, at least one of them has to be the MBA.<br /><br />First of all, for an MBA graduate school isn't something taken up for the love of knowledge or anything of that sort. It's a <i>capital expenditure</i>. They may actually learn something there, but that isn't the point: they are there entirely on the promise of future benefits. These folks are on their way up the economic ladder; they'd like nothing better than to get to the top faster. But how?<br /><br />The MBA, if s/he is worth consideration as such, has mastered the art of appearing competent. Their <i>entire mode of being</i> is geared towards impressing others. So far as I can tell, this is not even something they're necessarily even aware of: they really believe that they know what they're talking about, that they're not just passing around terms like "paradigm" or "value-added" as so many old coins. In classes and over lunches they inherit a cache of methods, concepts, and most importantly cliches (as an MBA you should be able to rattle off many dozen sayings about how "what doesn't kill you catches the worm" or whatever); they probably have little idea of where any of it comes from or whether any of it is true, but this isn't particularly important. It <i>looks</i> impressive, it <i>sounds</i> convincing, and that's what matters. Business not going well? Clearly what's needed is <i>team-based organization!!</i><br /><br />Sure, MBAs can also throw together a cost-benefit analysis and present it in PowerPoint if you want them to, but that isn't really what they're all about. The essence of the MBA is what the Greeks called δεινὸς λόγος, skillful discourse. You might see this on full display if you can catch them in a mistake - say, if they call a market move the wrong way. Watch them dance, watch them finesse the facts (or hint at how they did, in fact, have some strong suspicions that things might have gone the other way), watch them quickly and subtly move on to what they <i>did</i> get right. I don't think they see this as fibbing so much as just how conversation normally proceeds - as if any discussion whatsoever were a job interview. If they're able to convince you (and themselves) that P is the case, then P is the case. Everything comes down to this moment of convincement.<br /><br />Now, if MBAs ever drink Bourbon - and perhaps they shall do so more and more, given that vodka is becoming démodé - the bourbon they're likely to drink is Maker's Mark. I mean this not just as a kind of conceptual connection, but also as an empirical fact.<br /><br />Of course, we've all seen Maker's Mark on store shelves - the ubiquitous hammer-shaped bottle with the tan paper label and the red wax seal. Heck, more than likely you've got yourself a bottle stashed away somewhere. But if you pay attention to MM for awhile, certain facts about it may strike you as rather strange. The side of the label claims that it's "America's only handmade bourbon whisky - never mass produced"; the blurb continues in this style, making repeated claims as to the smallness and the traditional nature of the distillery as well as to the care put into the product. That sounds great and all, but, well... put it this way. I said before that we'd all seen this bottle on the store shelves, right? But <i>how?</i> <i>How</i> can that be possible? I have never, EVER been to a liquor store that didn't have a couple of bottles of MM on sale; I've seen it in grocery stores, in gas stations, and just about everywhere that one can buy alcohol. We're talking thousands of stores. How can it be said that this bourbon, which is more common than Danielle Steel novels, isn't mass produced? Exactly what definition of "mass-produced" are they using here?<br /><br />Ah, well. Let's look at the bottle itself, which - let's be honest - looks <i>amazing</i>. It's simple, rustic, and appealingly fashionable at the same time, like Hugh Jackman. To find a bourbon that looks cooler, I think you could step up to Blanton's (which comes in a grenade with a horse on top) - but this is surely the niftiest bottle in its price range. It is, of course, rather strange that a (supposedly ) small mom and pop operation like the Maker's Mark Distillery actually has its own bottles (with logos and everything), but we'll let that slide. Get some of the wax off the top, and... oh boy. You get a screw top with a plastic cap, rather than a cork. What's <i>that</i> doing here?<br /><br />Never mind that, though, let's get some of this into a snifter. Mark, of course, pours a pretty standard bourbon color - a beautiful deep bronze. Even in a glass it looks fantastic. The smell, though, is even better, so stick your head in and breathe deep. I get oak, sweet corn, caramel, honey and maybe just a tiny touch of pomegranate. There's a little bit of heat, but nowhere near as much as the 45% ABV would suggest. This is, with no doubt, an epic smell, one of my favorites on the planet. It might be the best smell in the bourbon biz altogether - or at least, if there's a bourbon that smells better than this, I can't recall trying it. <br /><br />So up until this point, things are going well - but now I have to actually drink the stuff. I take a sip. At first I get a typical sweet bourbon tingle. This quickly evolves into a pleasant honeyed oak flavor. And then... nothing much else happens. At all.<br /><br />I wish I were kidding, exaggerating for dramatic effect, but I'm not. There's not a damn thing beyond that one flavor, which carries the whole way through. Even the aftertaste is quite brief. Sure, there's also a little bit of a burn as it goes down - one of the few things that's interesting - but even the burn is quite mild, especially for something that's 90 proof. Praying that there's more here, I've now added a few drops of water - which just makes it taste like <i>watered down</i> honeyed oak. Astonishingly, even this brings out no more tastes, because there's just nothing else to bring out. This is all Maker's Mark will ever be.<br /><br />As a result, I find Maker's Mark infuriating. How could something that looks this cool and smells this impressive be so unbelievably bland when you actually sit down and drink it? Honestly, if I just wanted something to sip I'd take Beam or Evan Williams over this in a second; neither is my favorite bourbon, but at least they've got some character. However, I'm not the target audience here. The MBAs have no soul, and as a result of this they <i>love</i> Maker's Mark! Having made it through college getting sorority girls drunk with Ten High and coke, they're now ready to move up in the world. What an awesome bottle! What a great smell! And it's so <i>smooth</i>!! Yup, it's got everything an aspiring young professional could want (and that's if they drink it neat at all, which is unlikely so long as there's a bottle of 7-Up handy).<br /><br />So in the end they share an affinity, Maker's Mark and the MBA. Both of them are all about the initial impression, not any real substance. Mark looks like it should be a great whiskey; it even smells like it. But it isn't; not by a long shot.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: C+<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: Superficially captivating, profoundly lame. Think of it as a mediocre bourbon with whitened teeth and fake tits.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-90365078881691664642009-11-29T18:19:00.005-06:002010-02-24T23:28:15.846-06:00Stout Month Review: Founders Breakfast StoutGenerally when one uses terms like "coffee" and "chocolate" in booze reviews, one says them in a kind of analogous way. I certainly don't mean that I think there's actually chocolate in the brew, nor even that it even tastes like it does - I simply go searching for some adequate word, some useful description to get at what scents and flavors I encounter in the beer, and happen upon the closest other scents and flavors that I can think of. Hence, "I smell a bit of coffee in this...", "I taste chocolate and some cherries...", and so on. Things begin to get complicated, of course, once brewers (being the crazy people that they are) begin putting <i>actual</i> coffee and chocolate into their beers.<br /><br />Initially this seems like it would be a good idea. I'm no purist, after all, and I doubt many beer fans are. I say, the more ridiculous shit that brewers can do to their beer, the better - so long as it <i>works</i>. And chocolate and coffee seem like they would work pretty darn well. Again, how many reviews (like mine - guilty as charged) positively describe, e.g., the chocolatey taste of a beer? Imagine how much the love would increase if one actually put chocolate in!! And so it becomes the most logical thing in the world to dump real chocolate and real coffee into the vats. And the results so far have been... well, let's be kind and say "mixed."<br /><br />I like chocolate a lot, and so I thought I'd be pleased by the various beers I've had that use actual chocolate to brew. But the truth of the matter is, chocolate mostly gets lost when it enters a beer. It sinks into the background and mostly disappears, leaving only a vague bittersweetness. I thought, when I first bought it, that the Young's Double Chocolate Stout would be brilliant, but it wasn't: instead it was simply a (rather thin and one-dimensional) stout, slightly more bittersweet than others. Nothing bad, of course, just uninspired. Coffee beers, in contrast, go way back in the other direction. Put coffee in anything, it seems, and the coffee simply takes it over - for the three or four of these porters and stouts that I've tried, I might as well have been drinking a big pot of iced-down joe. The only one I'd previously found to be reasonably successful is Kona's Pipeline Porter, and that's only because they obviously did everything in their power to keep the thing as light and as balanced as humanly possible (even so, I could never drink more than one a day).<br /><br />And so we come to the Founders Breakfast Stout, which the bottle describes as a "Double Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout." That sounds, in theory, like it should be great. Even the all-knowing internet says it's great: RateBeer claims it's the 39th best beer in existence, BeerAdvocate disagrees and says it's the 21st. The rather grotesque baby on the bottle's label seems to agree as well. Then you actually try it, and things start to go wrong.<br /><br />It pours pitch black, with a moderate viscosity and a tiny bronze half-finger head. That sounds pretty good, right? But then you take a scent, and - oh boy. It's coffee. It's all coffee, all the way down. Go ahead, stick your nose as deep in there as you can tolerate, you're not going to find anything in there beyond coffee. It's the unmistakable smell of a kitchen that's had its joe maker set on Warm for three hours. And that's good if you like coffee, but I like my beers to have other elements.<br /><br />Take a sip, and what you get is entirely dominated by - you guessed it - coffee. In the front there's a tingly jolt of java bitterness. It quickly coats your mouth in espresso as it travels back, and leaves a bitter coffee aftertaste behind (with maybe a tinge of sweetness for relief). This beer is coffee, coffee, coffee. There could be oatmeal or chocolate or scrambled eggs or even Cinnamon Toast Frikkin' Crunch brewed into this stuff, and I wouldn't taste it at all. If there are any other elements whatsoever to this beer, the one-dimensional coffee taste just beats them back well beyond the margins and keeps them there for the duration of the sipping. The label says this beer is 8.3% alcohol. Do I believe it? Well, sure, but I would have also believed four or sixteen. I honestly couldn't imagine it making much difference: the coffee completely trumps the booziness here, just as it trumps everything else. If you honestly think this is the 21st best beer in the world, well, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. Maybe I'm even missing something in this stout that a more skilled or mature taster would pick up on. In the meantime, however, I tend to think you're simply bonkers.<br /><br />I'll give it a B, since there's nothing actually wrong with the stuff - it just doesn't have breadth, it doesn't do anything beyond its one trick. And I may complain about the coffee dominating everything, yes, but it's actually a pretty pleasant coffee taste as far as these things go. If you're the type of person who makes your own espresso and drinks it straight, you'll appreciate this stuff far more than I can. As for me, if I wanted a big heavy blast of joe I don't think I'd be drinking a beer for it.<br /><br />[RETROSPECTIVE EDIT, Feb. '10: you know what? I had this again and found it even more unpleasant. This gets a B- at best.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: B<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. Coffee coffee, coffee coffee coffee. Coffee? Coffee.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-83481258280001431112009-11-29T02:53:00.006-06:002009-11-29T03:34:09.334-06:00Stout Month Review: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (2008 vintage)Recently I got into a discussion with some friends on a sticky point in anthropology and international rights that, it seems to me, can be broadened into a philosophical issue. It started with the famous Trekkian question of the prime directive. Let's say you encounter a small, entirely isolated culture on an island out in in the Pacific somewhere. How far, and under what conditions, do you interfere with or enculturate them?<br /><br />The general agreement seemed to be that if the group needed some kind of medical assistance (they suffer from some kind of illness, say) then one should offer it or trade it to them; beyond that things got more iffy. It's quite questionable whether a "modern" culture, lifestyle, way of thinking etc. is any better (or, indeed, any worse) than that of the islanders. The itch to keep other cultures as they are, as unchanging objects - this is questionable. But then, the full-on enculturation of the islanders (e.g. taking them back to port) - this too is questionable. But what if they <i>ask</i> to be taken in? They could very well do so - and yet, could they make such a request based on any secure information?<br /><br />During the course of the discussion it seemed to me that we were missing one possible avenue of approach, which I then tried to describe by analogy. I said something like the following:<br /><br />"In my life, I'll probably never own a Lamborghini. But let us say that one day I gain an opportunity to have one, and all I need to do is to make the choice affirmatively. The difficulty is this: I have <i>no idea</i> what it would be like to drive a Lamborghini. It's very unlike anything I have previously dealt with. I shall never truly know what I'm in for in owning one until I sit in the seat and push the pedal - in other words, I shall never know what it's like to own a Lambo until I've already made the decision to own one. So it looks as if I have to choose somewhat blindly. Nevertheless, in the meantime there's still something I can do - I can <i>ask</i> people who already own Lamborghinis to describe the experience, as best they can, in my terms, and I can listen carefully to their descriptions of the joys and the costs (I can also read reviews, etc.). I shall still be missing something, no doubt, but this allows me much more of an informed decision.<br /><br />"Now, the islanders are in a similar situation to me and my Lamborghini. They can choose to be enculturated or not. But the condition for adequately <i>knowing</i> what that would be like and evaluating it appropriately, is that they already be enculturated. All the same, though, can't they <i>talk</i> to us and ask us what it's like? Can't we describe to them, in more or less imperfect ways, what it means to live in a so-called 'modern' world? A full education is out of the question here, but I think one might be able to communicate some sense of this life."<br /><br />My roommate Claudia pointed out to me - quite rightly - that I assume that communication would be possible in the first place, when it may not be the case. Indeed I do, and I have no easy answer (philosopically) to what it would mean to establish such communication (e.g., whether that would already be a kind of interference). So, Claudia wins this round. Nevertheless, the Lamborghini buying example and the situation of the islanders seems to me to hint at a special kind of philosophical phenomenon. In both cases the matter chosen or denied is a black hole of sorts - if I stay away then I shall never see (understand) it, and if I move in for a closer study then I shall be pulled in without hope of reversing the decision. I will either be stuck with it or forever kept in ignorance.<br /><br />Every choice - I put this forward as a hypothesis - presupposes some knowledge of the directions that may be taken. Call this knowledge the <i>epistemic condition</i> for the choice. What is distinctive about these two cases is that although the epistemic condition is <i>given</i> in some sense - I will know what I have chosen when I have chosen it - it is also, to some degree or another, unavailable, away, absent. Let us dub these situations <i>abconditional choices</i>, for lack of a better term. These are not simply choices made without adequate knowledge, but choices where the <i>only way to know for sure</i> is to choose a certain way.<br /><br />The cliche'd example of such an abconditional choice, of course, is the game show host presenting three numbered doors. Most of these choices seem to me much more quotidian, however, and much closer to home. When we buy a gift (or really, any consumer product), or go on a date with someone, we choose abconditionally; just so, when we drive the back roads rather than the interstate, or learn the guitar rather than the piano. Many of the decisions we make in life are one-way streets that we cannot escape if we enter, and cannot know what lies on the other end; we can perhaps only rely on the word of those who have already gone in.<br /><br />Such is the situation I find myself in trying to review the Bourbon County Stout. How the fuck do I describe this thing? Nothing I've ever had comes close, not even the <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-review-walter-paytons.html>Payton Bourbon Barrel Stout</a>, and I'm willing to bet the same goes for you, dear reader. I'll do the best that I can, but in the end the only way you'll know for sure what this sucker is is to try it for your own self.<br /><br />Everything about this beer says it's going to be huge. The story helpfully written on the bottle (which is rather nicely designed, by the way, as is standard for Goose Island) indicates they made this by jamming malt into their tuns to the point of overflowing and then aging the results in an oak bourbon barrel for 100 days. How heavy is the result? Well, it's 13% alcohol. <i>Thirteen percent</i>. I've had distilled liquors weaker than that. So basically I'm expecting this thing to knock my damn fool head off (and, just to give you a preview, it doesn't disappoint).<br /><br />I expect something special when I popped the top - a Michael Bay-style explosion, maybe. But there's nothing, just a very quiet hiss (there's not much carbonation in something like this, as you can imagine). I expect the smell to start pervading the room immediately, the way the Payton Stout did. But it doesn't - sure, it's got a striking odor when I take a whiff from the bottle, but it doesn't stink up the whole area. I give it a pour - it's absolutely pitch black and quite thick, albeit not as much as the Payton. Head? Ha, you must be joking. This is <i>thirteen percent</i>, vato, nothing's escaping from this shit. There's a little bit of copper foam haplessly floating around, but that's all: looking for a glorious stouty head is a lost cause here. The smell, again, is very similar to the Payton, but a lot more subdued - it's mainly sweet vanilla, with a few bourbon notes. It's hot, though. No hiding the alcohol when the brew's this big.<br /><br />At this point I'm - well, not exactly disappointed, but certainly not bowled over. I paid six bucks for this bottle, versus (on average) two-fitty for the Payton - which spent three times as much time in the barrel. Honestly I'm feeling a little bit gypped. And then I take my first sip.<br /><br />Holy fucking shit wow. Wow. What in the. I can't even. This is. I. Guh.<br /><br />This beer is absolutely, completely overwhelming. Goose Island put a blurb on the side of the bottle, claiming it has "more flavor than your average case of beer." Astonishingly, they aren't lying. Do you remember the lack of dimensionality I complained about in the Payton review? That dimensionality is here, in spades. Drinking that was like sitting inside a giant subwoofer. Drinking this is like sitting inside a giant orchestra. Fucking hell, you know what? That's putting it way too elegantly. Drinking this is like being socked in the head by The Thing - it's just an unbelievably strong, potent, mouth-coating taste.<br /><br />Okay, backing up a little, let's see if I can be more precise about this. Up front, there's slickness and a little bit of bitterness. Then, moving back, it e-x-p-l-o-d-e-s. The main taste is oak, bourbon, and roasted malts, but there's so much else here I don't even know where to begin. Licorice. Espresso. Rye. Prunes. Cacao? (Look, I got nothing folks, they should've sent a poet.) After it hits the back, the oaky notes begin to assert themselves more forcefully and take over, leaving an aftertaste so heavy it feels like you're breathing alcohol for seconds afterwards.<br /><br />The mouthfeel is, of course, extremely thick and almost clammy. But in a good way. Like the Payton, this shit will coat your mouth like nothing else - don't even think of pairing it with anything, the BCS'll just run right over it and then take another pass to make sure it's dead. Oddly, though, I find this monster easier to drink than the Payton as well. I'd never call it a sessioner, but the sheer mass of flavors beg to be examined and inspected with another sip. Really, this isn't a beer, it's a fucking Bruckner symphony.<br /><br />One final note for the description: this shit is STRONG. I know I said 13%, but it's definitely the harder side of 13%. I am now barely halfway down the bottle (a feat which took more than a half-hour), and I am well beyond Buzzed and entering the land of Shitfaced. Based on the sheer alcoholic force of this brew, thirteen sounds like a woeful underestimation. I don't mind, of course, but don't plan on doing much after you down one of these.<br /><br />The grade? A+. Easily. I'm completely sold - there's simply nothing else to be done here. When I wasn't paying attention, Goose Island - they of the ubiquitous shitty wheat ale - went and crafted a masterpiece. Actually, this is something more than a masterpiece: it's a Concorde, it's a milestone in brewing history. I am left with nothing to compare it to.<br /><br />My local Binny's has had four packs of the 2008 vintage on hand since last year, and they're selling them for about $21. That's well over five bucks for a bottle. Is it worth it? My opinion lies somewhere between "Yes" and "That's a Fucking Bargain," but I know that's probably not going to help you much - you who is reading this, you who is trying to decide whether to drink this stuff. I wish there was something I could say that <span style="font-style:italic;">would</span> help, but I hit a wall a few paragraphs ago. In the end, you'll either try it or you won't, and you'll make that decision having no idea what you're getting into.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: A+<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: It's a beer in the same way that Heracles was a man. It is, and yet... it just isn't.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-49445256671237873392009-11-28T00:11:00.010-06:002009-11-29T01:40:16.101-06:00Stout Month Review: Great Lakes Blackout StoutI love pop songs.<br /><br />Mind you, this is kind of a crazy thing for me to admit. In college I was a music student for a good three years, and pop music never crossed my mind. Even earlier on, as a kid, I never really knew the stuff; I'd heard the crap my sister and friends would listen to, of course, but it never made any connection with me. My musical interests in high school, for the most part, tended towards Steve Reich, Schoenberg, Autechre, and the like. Kid A struck me as unremarkable, if that gives you some idea.<br /><br />It wasn't until much, much later - we're talking like a year after my undergraduate degree - that I began to understand the essence of the pop song. The turning point, predictably, was Prince, as Prince got the medicine of pop music understanding into me by way of a spoonful of sweet, sweet weirdness. I mean, take a listen to <a href=http://www.imeem.com/star2008/music/DDxm1HjQ/prince-i-could-never-take-the-place-of-your-man/>this thing</a>. I honestly think this is one of the best songs ever written: the verses are great, the chorus is spectacular, and it's got a riff so good no ass in hearing range shall remain unshaken. And yet in this version, it's got that freaky freeform intro and a bridge that lasts forever going pretty much nowhere. In every way it conforms to pop music forms, and yet it's almost eight minutes long and pretty much indisputably bizarre. (This taught me a lesson about pop music that I still recognize today: good pop music is, by definition, somewhat <i>strange</i> pop music. The weirder and more incomprehensible (within the form's limits), the better. Go listen to Thriller if you don't believe me: at every moment the album radiates weirdness, and yet it never fails to hit the standard cues. This marriage of formula and contained insanity just <i>is</i> good pop music).<br /><br />After Prince it was only a matter of time before I found Marvin Gaye, Sinatra, Madonna, Bobby Darin, the Beatles, and of course Jacko. At about this time, of course, Rickrolling had hit the net with full force, and so I also found out about <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock,_Aitken_&_Waterman>Stock Aitken Waterman</a> - a cynical pop song factory that, by the end, had perfected the art of hitting the lowest common denomenator.<br /><br />Good lord, the SAW back catalogues. What a <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be7rBgc-OEE>fucking</a> <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVGq8Vd4SJI>mess</a> of <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR3pQpqeqSc>horrible</a> <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFOZ6zk_Evo>shit</a> and <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssF8jAU55o0>fantastically</a> <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6fKRi-byRk>inspired</a> <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiIJOB0GLW4>genius</a>. Never Gonna Give You Up is only the beginning, folks, these people had been plowing the world with impossibly catchy tunes for years before they even hit on the goofy redhead in the suit. Remember <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCiVXigrjjQ>Dead or Alive</a>? That was SAW. Remember <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nl46l8XHvg>Bananarama</a>? Yup. Hell, even Judas Priest worked with these fuckers for awhile. SAW was the scourge of the '80s pop charts, especially in the U.K., and they were even famous enough to even attract <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC3DiNGT0PQ>parodies</a> (Rickroll fans should watch for an Astley trio about 45 seconds in). Obviously I personally skipped the portions of my childhood where I would have cared about any of this, but this strikes me as the sort of stuff that kids would have bought like musical crack right up until the point where it became cool to scoff at it. Such is the order of things. And it is terrible, right? It's not subtle, it's not something you can use to impress potential girlfriends if they have any degree of "taste," it's not something you can play seriously at parties. And yet.<br /><br />You know all those free jazz albums you claim to love so much? Those breakcore producers, those psychobilly bands, those math rockers? When's the last time you ended up <i>humming</i> one of their tracks for days?<br /><br />And that seems to me to be the fact of the matter. We can judge this stuff poorly all we like, but for some reason it <i>sticks</i> to us. It holds our interest, our care, when the things that should don't. And so you can pose and preen like you're above this stuff, you can hide behind your Mountain Goats and Death Cab albums all you want, but the fact of the matter is: these cynical fucks could write better music than half the folks in your collection.<br /><br />The reason I bring up SAW, then, is because the Blackout Stout reminds me of them - and, I believe, for good reason.<br /><br />Great Lakes is probably my favorite American brewery at the moment. I've already reviewed their <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-brief-its-good-beer.html>Glockenspiel</a>, but there's just so much more: the Dortmunder Gold and Eliot Ness, which are among the best lagers I've ever had; the Oktoberfest, which is a near-flawless exemplar of the style; and, above all, the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which I think is the best porter brewed in the States (excepting the Baltics, which are very different beers, and the much stronger "imperials" - e.g., Flying Dog's Gonzo porter). I've never had anything from them that was short of excellent; I'm not even sure if they're capable of it.<br /><br />Today, though, I'm reviewing the Blackout Stout. They only brew these suckers in Winter, and I've been storing this one since March. The bottle, incidentally, declares a freshness date of August 9, 2009. I think that may be Great Lakes' poor idea of a joke.<br /><br />Anyways, this stout has a rather unusual history. According to its website, it's named for "the infamous 'Blackout of 2003' that left the northeastern United States in complete darkness, but resulted in old-fashioned neighborhood porch parties and down-home fun." The picture on the bottle depicts this happy darkness, with candle-bearing folks getting together (apparently) to suck down a box full of fine Great Lakes beers. The trouble is, although this beer is <i>named</i> after this blackout, it clearly wasn't <i>brewed</i> for it: it got its first award in 1996, as "Emmett's Imperial Stout." I don't know who the hell Emmett is, but clearly the guy knew a thing or two about beers. Anyways, let's get this thing in a glass.<br /><br />Well now, this isn't what I expected. It pours a ruby-tinged black - nothing out of the ordinary - but what surprises me is that it's really not all that <i>thick</i>. I mean, it's not exactly watery (this is an imperial stout, after all), but compared to others of the style this is definitely lacking in viscosity (think 5w20 rather than 20w50). I also get a one-finger tan head, with a little bit of lacing - that, like the color, is also pretty standard. It initially smells of cacao and a little bit of raisin; when agitated, I get some molasses as well. There's no trace of booziness at all, either. All in all, it's a very subtle smell after the heavy ice-creamy Brooklyn last week.<br /><br />I've now taken my first sip, and the overall impression is <i>ash</i> - deliciously so. This tastes like a smoky fourth of July barbeque smells. Up front is a tingly, almost sandpapery texture, which - moving back - evolves into a wonderful roasted malt bittersweetness. There's a little bit of other stuff in there too - maybe some brown sugar - but not much. The charcoal taste hits at the end and takes up most of the aftertaste, along with some lingering brown sugar flavors. How can I describe this better? Do you remember how, way back when you roasted marshmallows as a kid, you used to prefer - rather than just searing them - actually catching the marshmallows on fire, and then blowing them out ? There was a good reason for this: burned almost to a crisp, they were actually way fucking better to eat. This stout is a lot like those crispy, burned, but delicious marshmallows. God it's good.<br /><br />What's really striking is just how easy it is to drink. The mouthfeel is extremely light for this style - it's got none of the heavy bombast you get, e.g., in Old Rasputin. Despite the 9% abv, It would be dangerously easy to quaff this stuff all night. I said some nice things about the drinkability of the Brooklyn last week, but this is really in a different league altogether. I could work through a four-pack of these like a bag of candy - something I couldn't do with most stouts, let alone imperials. I of all people wouldn't want to draw sharp distinctions between styles, but the more I drink the more I think this may be mislabeled as a "stout." If anything this reminds me of their own Edmund Fitzgerald, a porter, with the roasted malts and the ashy hops all given a good extra jolt.<br /><br />So, obviously the Blackout is not the most complex of the imperials. Nor the cheapest, I should add. However, it's incredibly delicious and almost pathologically drinkable. What this is, then, is the SAW take on the style. If you're trying to show off your manliness as a beer drinker, you can not and should not admit to liking it - it's just too damn smooth and simple. No, you'll want to find an imperial stout at 30 proof with enough hops to kill a hippo to declare as your favorite. Really though, if there's any of these things that one could drink every night, it's this - because it's just so goddamned fun. Appearances be damned, I couldn't stop loving it if I tried.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: A-<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: The most drinkable imperial stout I've had yet.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-36585743823316409132009-11-24T21:03:00.006-06:002009-11-27T14:09:28.867-06:00Stout Month Review: Stockyard Oatmeal StoutI love pseudonyms, particularly due to the problems they present. Someone pens a text, and then adds a signature to it which is not their proper name: are they the <i>author</i> of this text?<br /><br />I want to say: yes and no. Surely the text would not exist, were it not for the skill and the organization of the one behind the pen. But the concept of "author" is usually stronger than that: we want the text of an author to say <i>what the author intends themselves to say</i>. This need not be the case at all with a pseudonym. Kierkegaard, of course, is the textbook example. It is usually quite wrong to say, as we casually do, that "Kierkegaard suggested that...", "Kierkegaard held that...", etc.: precisely speaking we should say that he was the <i>author</i> of very little, but that he <i>penned</i> quite a lot. What he penned appeared under the names de Silentio, Climacus, Anti-Climacus, and so on, and we should not assume without further ado that these books say what Søren Kierkegaard intended.<br /><br />But then again, one does not need a full-blown pseudonym to pen what one does not intend. Think, for example, of <i>A Modest Proposal</i>, which appeared under Jonathan Swift's own name. And think too of the contrary case of a pseudonym that allows an author to write <i>exactly</i> what they intend, but something which for one reason or another cannot appear under their own name (George Eliot, Lewis Carroll). There is, in any case, a sort of disconnect between authorship, the name which a text appears under, and the one penning the manuscript. This is by no means to say, as some of the more hasty among us might want, that there is no such thing as an author. This is nonsense: there are and have been plenty of examples of authorship in the simple and quite boring sense. A more serious question might be whether "authorship" should maintain its status as a kind of <i>standard</i> for any act of writing.<br /><br />Here we have the Stockyard Oatmeal Stout, which is a pseudonymous <i>beer</i>. It claims to have been made by the "Stockyard Brewing Co." in Chicago. This company does not exist: there is no website, no address, no nothing. Instead, Stockyard is brewed under contract especially for Trader Joe's (where I bought it), and - if the internet is to be believed - it is in fact the work of our friends at Goose Island.<br /><br />Now, this should seem a bit strange. First of all, Goose Island also sells an <a href=http://spondologos.blogspot.com/2009/11/stout-month-reviews-goose-island.html>Oatmeal Stout</a> under its own label; I've had it, and I like it. Second, that stout costs more money ($8 for a sixer), and you can buy it in many more places. So what's going on here? Has Goose Island simply repackaged their stout in a nice new red bottle to make some extra bucks? There's one way to find out.<br /><br />First of all, the bottle. It's not the classy affair that the Goatmoose Stout's was. It's red and slightly garish; front and center is an old guy in a cap smirking at you, apparently just as happy as you are that you've saved two bucks. I'm not sure who the hell he's supposed to be, but he's certainly old and looks kind of vaguely blue-collary. There's also some cows and trains and other people in caps and... look, I don't know. I honestly don't think the Macbook guys put much work into this one, folks. Anyways, despite the rather stupid bottle, let's open this thing up and see if it actually is our old friend the Goatmoose.<br /><br />Well, it pours dark brown with (yes) a half-finger off-white head - just like the Goatmoose stout. The smell is mainly of oats and just a little bit of fruitiness - just like the Goatmoose stout. The taste - <br /><br />Actually, the taste is pretty different. It's more smooth and creamy than the Goatmoose for a start, and much more dry as well. Up front, I get a little tingle and some baker's chocolate. There's not much to say about the middle or the back end, to be honest - it's all a fairly successful mix of dry stout creamy and oatmeal stout smooth, with just a hint of bitterness after a moment. The aftertaste is a dry tang - some roasted hickory melded with mildly sour hops, and just a touch of malty sweetness. Not bad, and not at all the same beer as its brother. It does taste "cheap" in a way that's difficult to describe, though. Parts of the middle and the end almost remind me of a lager, it's actually quite thin (despite the creaminess), and the alcohol (although this is only a 5%er) comes out more strikingly than I would have thought.<br /><br />I started this one expecting to get a fairly straightforward oatmeal stout like the Goatmoose, and what I got instead was an odd medium between the Goatmoose and an Irish stout. It's nowhere near as sweet as the Goatmoose - nor is it as refined - but it trades it out for more bitterness, a little more creaminess, and an extra touch of hops.<br /><br />So which one is best? Well, if the two were priced the same, I'd say to buy the Goatmoose for drinking just one beer and to buy the Stockyard to make a night of it. Despite the odd lager character, the Stockyard is less sweet and lacks that sliminess I detected in the Goatmoose - and that makes it easier to drink in the long haul. But then, the Goatmoose is quite a lot more refined and interesting. You might actually be able to impress someone with the Goose Island stuff, while the Stockyard is fairly forgettable. The thing is, though, these aren't priced the same. At Trader Joe's, a six pack of Stockyards is <i>six dollars</i>. That's even less than the Black Hawk Stout I reviewed a few weeks ago. It tastes cheap, then, because it is cheap. That price, combined with its easy drinkability, makes it a hell of a good candidate for a party beer (even if, overall, I think I slightly prefer the Mendocino).<br /><br />So I'm torn. I think the Goatmoose stout is the better beer in the end, but in a lot of ways this is the one I'd prefer to drink. It's not all that great, there's not all that much nuance to it, it's even kind of watery and grungy, but I think I like that unpretentious character. As far as pseudonyms go, Stockyard - with its worker's looks - couldn't be a better disguise for the rather too petit bourgeois Goose Island. This is a working man's beer, a stout for that anonymous blue collar joe on the label. It's the goddamned backbone of America, this stout is. So park that F-150, loosen the belt on those jeans, crank the Springsteen, and pop the cap on a manly American bottle of Stockyard. And hope to God no one finds out you were shopping at Trader Joe's.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: C+<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: If Tom Hanks were a stout.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733584498975238502.post-37171811550967645232009-11-22T17:41:00.003-06:002009-11-22T17:47:59.372-06:00Stout Month Review: Left Hand Milk Stout<i>U can see thru race car drivers<br />Let me show U what I'm made of<br />Tonight is the night 4 making<br />Slow love<br /><br />--Prince</i><br /><br />There are a lot of activities in the world that can, and should be, sped up. The trip from Chicago to Boston, for example - or graphics processing in game consoles, or getting a passport, or nuking a microwave dinner. On the other hand, some things in life will <i>only</i> work if you do them slowly. Roasting a duck, walking in the woods, buying a house. When it comes to such things, if you try to cut a few corners in order to save some time you will either miss the point completely or inevitably screw them up.<br /><br />Philosophy, as it turns out, happens to be one of those things. There are born geniuses when it comes to mathematics or to counterpoint, but - with the arguable exception of Schelling (I considered Kripke too, but I don't think the early work counts) - there are no born philosophers. No one starts pontificating about the nature of perception at the moment they can speak. Philosophers are, on the contrary, normal folks - perhaps with a greater curiosity than others, although I'm not sure even that is necessary - who are, at one time or another, struck with the drive to <i>think</i>. And, even more odd, they stick with it. (I have a suspicion, albeit unconfirmable, that everyone "philosophizes" at one time or another - the difference being that everyone else has the good taste to stop at the moment when common sense first provides an answer).<br /><br />At any rate, philosophy takes time. It requires some maturity, some amount of aging, to be philosophical - not a lot, but some. More than that, the <i>act itself</i> requires time to work itself though. A philosophy must ferment. Kant was famously silent for a decade before the publication of the first <i>Critique</i>. Descartes required half-again more than that between the initial moves of the <i>Regulae</i> and the publication of the <i>Meditationes</i>. Quine was nearly 20 years into his career before he published <i>Two Dogmas</i>. Husserl required nine fallow years for the <i>Investigations</i>, Heidegger 12 for <i>Being and Time</i>. Spinoza and Wittgenstein never even lived to see the publication of their (incomplete) masterworks, which they'd been hammering at for decades. And I could, of course, go on.<br /><br />All of this is good evidence of the sheer wrongheadedness of taking these texts casually, as "positions" that can be easily understood, reckoned with, and taken up or critiqued by anyone interested. It is also good evidence of the sheer silliness of first-year philosophy majors who take it upon themselves to "refute" Descartes or Wittgenstein in a ten page paper written over the course of a weekend. And I say this not to make a case for "elitism," if by that one means that only certain special people should be able to talk about philosophy. There is - I stress again - nothing exceptional and inborn about philosophers, and education at the best of institutions does not guarantee any special status either. All I consider necessary is to <i>give philosophy its time</i> - to <i>live within</i> a problem, a text, or a way of thinking for awhile.<br /><br />A philosophical affair takes awhile. One must sit with it, in summers and winters, in happy times and sad ones; one must debate the affair, attack it, defend it. Only after a long time, and (at minimum) many weeks of frusteration, might it begin to clarify itself. One can either grant it its time (with no guarantee of success) or sidle on past with things half-understood - and one can get quite far by sidling.<br /><br />Anyways, all this talk about taking time brings me to the Left Hand Milk Stout. (And I've got a lot more stouts to write about before November comes to a close, so let's get right to it.)<br /><br />Now what, you may ask, is a milk stout? Well, according to Wikipedia (which is always right, especially when it comes to philosophy), a milk stout "is a stout containing lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because lactose is unfermentable by beer yeast, it adds sweetness, body, and calories to the finished beer." These days it's a rather obscure style - Sam Adams has the Cream Stout (which is one of their best beers), Young's has their Double Chocolate (which isn't as great as it sounds), and Bell's - which now seems to have about a hundred stouts to their name - has the Double Cream (which I haven't tried). Aside from those and the Left Hand here, I haven't seen any others around Chicago. Which is a shame, really - this is exactly the style you want when it's necessary to nurse a single beer for hours on end and piss off the bartender.<br /><br />I'm a big fan of the Left Hand bottle design. This one, with its friendly white and blue color scheme and goofy handprinted cow, looks like the sort of thing Doug the Hopeless Dork brought to lunch every day in sixth grade (his mother being worried about his calcium, and making sure he had a big stupid bottle of milk every day). No indication of the alcohol content on here, but my friends at BeerAdvocate inform me that it's a welterweight at 5.2%. So, let's get her in a glass then.<br /><br />The milk stout pours a surprisingly light-looking semi-transparent mahogany color. There's also a tiny, pitiful excuse for a head, if you can call it that - even with a very aggressive pour, you'd have to get into absurdly tiny finger-fractions to measure this thing. There's basically no lacing, which is fine by me. And then there's the smell - dear god, it's chocolate milk. No, really. This isn't one of those stupid poetic phrases that reviewers like to use because they can't think of anything more apt: this stout actually does smell like (really good) chocolate milk. At first the scent is not particularly strong, just very sweet and very... milky (sorry). After giving it a good bit of agitation, though, it opens up considerably. The roasted malts come right through, along with - strangely - sassafras. Yeah, odd as it may sound, this actually smells a little bit like root beer if you shake it like a motherfucker and stick your nose in deep enough. And now to taste it.<br /><br />Well! The first thing you'll notice, probably, is the lactose's effect on the mouthfeel. God it's smooth. Almost supernaturally so. Actually, you couldn't get any more smooth if you put Billy D. Williams in a tuxedo and played So What over the stereo. This is so goddamned smooth, in fact, that one could easily pound down a bottle in a few minutes.<br /><br />That would be a crime, however. In fact, it would be a crime (confession time) that I myself once made after coming off a massive, months-long investigation of malt liquors. Don't criticize me too much for this: a month's worth of forties will prime anyone to drink almost anything very, very fast. Now, imbibed in such a fashion, the milk stout is still a good beer. It's oddly comforting, like petting a cat for a moment or two before it scampers off. But slow down a little, though, and this good beer becomes a great one. You want to make this sucker last a half-hour at the very minimum, folks. Get comfortable, ignore the dirty looks of the gentleman behind the bar, and enjoy this stout the way Prince would have intended.<br /><br />All right, we've noted the impossible smoothness - what about the taste? Well, although it's certainly not a kick-you-in-the-teeth kind of beer, the Milk Stout's got more complexity to it than it really deserves (or than one might initially expect). Up front it doesn't have much taste per se, but it's got a bit of a tingle - like an old can of root beer that's still got a bit of carbonation left. The creamy, malty sweetness comes next - it's milk chocolate all the way, with hints of vanilla and sassafras. Which leaves you completely open for the slight shock of bitterness that closes out the taste and coats one's throat all the way down. The flavor may be mainly milk chocolate, but by the end it's still got a good cacao bite to it. The aftertaste, of course, lasts forever, and further encourages you to be as slow with this stuff as you can.<br /><br />I really like this beer. The slower you drink it, the better it gets. It could stand a little more complexity to it, to be sure, but not much. This beer, fundamentally, is an old easy chair, a big fat St. Bernard to lay your head on. It provides a comfortable way to pass the time, and it does that job with astonishing skill.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Grade</span>: A-<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary</span>: A brilliant stout. Drinking slowly is preferred here.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04660375324782890566noreply@blogger.com0